Today’s Rich Are Different
It used to be that plutocrats felt they were part of the society in which they lived, or at least felt the need to act as if they were part of that society. Thus, when they decided to give away some of their enormous fortunes, their gifts generally reflected a desire to improve the communities in which they lived, and often showed a desire to benefit a high culture they respected or at least felt the need to respect. Many American cities have museums, orchestras, libraries, and universities endowed by the robber barons or their descendants.
Today's rich are different. Yesterday, there was a news item describing how Amazon founder Jeff Bezos "would be funding the 'Clock of the Long Now.' The clock is designed to keep ticking for 10,000 years, and will be built in a mountain in west Texas." Bezos' gift seems motivated by a desire to emulate bad science fiction; it certainly has nothing to do with helping Bezos' community or advancing high culture.
Stranger still is the cause PayPal founder Peter Thiel has chosen to advance. Thiel is "a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil-rig platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place." As a friend wrote me about this article: "Someone should write a novel about humans living on an island cut off from culture, religion, family and tradition. Oh yeah, William Golding already did. It's called Lord of the Flies."
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Thiel's seasteading experiment is a contradiction unto itself.
If he were evangelising his idea of an ideal society to other people and perhaps gaining converts, he would indicate that his proposals are only to help benefit other people.
But by trying to build his ideal society elsewhere, he basically admits that it's of no use to other people who will continue to live in their respective societies.
Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church was once asked whether his inability to win converts signified that something was wrong with his doctrine. He angrily responded, "It's the integrity of the message that matters! Not its acceptance!"
Tom, Piatak,
The old plutocrats were oligarchs who felt some sense of honer for their ancestors. Ike, for instance, was not a timocratic man to the degree that Patton, Rommell or Montgomery were, but he understood them. He aspired to honorable conduct even if he felt the oligarchic pull to concentrate more on the practical and attainable than the honorable.
The plutocrats today are more like the democrats described by Plato in The Republic. They want what they want, do what they want because they can and because they have no standard by which they live, other than their own desires. This was vividly illustrated in the recent deficit debate where plutocrats on both sides stuck to their ideology of every man for himself. Or as they put it --"it's all about the economy and jobs, jobs, jobs!" as opposed to statecraft, justice, good work or cities and towns. The problem today is thought to be social but it is not, it is theological. Our theology teaches every man for himself, our culture has sustained it, inscribed it in our hearts, and we are now reaping the fruits. There are pockets of backwardness where the old ethic is still remembered as quaint, like old television shows, but it is under constant strain and cannot hold except in isolated pockets where it can be left alone.
It is not defeatist or weakness to retreat when it is the tactical thing to do in the midst of battle. We Were Soldiers Once.. and young, is a good book about courage, tactics and strategy in the late 20th century. The last of the American timocrats lost and came home to a democrat's welcome. Which, as I said above, has nothing to do with another at all.
Even Warren Buffett, who is more oligarch than democrat, was just recently espousing the virtues and obligations of the rich to their country, like sharing wealth with the poor while promoting abortion and infanticide in their families and homes.
"The old plutocrats were oligarchs who felt some sense of honer for their ancestors."
Such as the very honourable Marcus Licinnius Crassus, perhaps?
At least Bezos and Thiel are wasting their dough on pointless projects. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are leaving their money to demonic abortion and population control (killing) groups.
The Seasteading Institute is by no means Thiel's most unfortunate project:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/focus_on_transhumanism_the_quest_for_proactive_evolution/
Thanks for the article, Jerry. It should come as no surprise that people who want to live on artificial islands with no rules also want to replace human beings with something "better."
The Clock of the Long Now seems to value grandiosity as an end in itself - not to honor God or even to promote a political ideology, but simply to be massive for its own sake.
If only Warren Buffett had his father's political views, Chronicles might never want for money.
Golding wrote another man-on-an-island book, Pincher Martin. The title character is, as I recall, a plutocrat type who is clinging to a rock in mid-ocean after a shipwreck. Unlike in Lord of the Flies, no adult shows up to bail him out. I read it ages ago, and it threw me off of Golding ever since. Not that it's a bad book--not a bit of it. It's just that, back then, I could only stand to read so many books that are so direly convincing. I should return to Golding, perhaps.