<nettime> Tom Hodgkinson: What do they do with all that money? (The Idler)

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

bwo The Idler
https://www.idler.co.uk/


Dear Idlers,

As you may recall, I am a fan of the Financial Times, even though I 
don't understand it.
One of my favourite FT tropes is "executive pay gets out of hand". Every 
day I torment myself by reading about the millions American 
über-capitalist wolf pack leaders award themselves, people like Mark 
Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of the ad sales scam Facebook and Jamie 
Dimon of usurers JP Morgan. Sums like $25 million dollars a year are 
regularly bandied around. That's $500,000 a week. I wonder what on earth 
they spend it on?
Well, the FT helpfully answered that question, and in Zuckerberg's case, 
it is security. Yes, last year he spent $22.6 million dollars on a 
private army (and private jets) to guard him as he travels round the 
world figuring out new ways to extract money out of friendship. What an 
absurd level of self-importance would lead a CEO to spend half a million 
a week on bodyguards?
Jeff Bezos spent $1.6m and Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi spent $2 million 
on personal security, suggesting that while very important, they are not 
quite as important as Zuckerberg. The other point to make is that if 
they hadn't made themselves into such arseholes in the first place they 
wouldn't have become so paranoid. Most of us spend £0 a year on our 
personal security because no one hates us that much.
Lucky old security industry, I guess.

Oh dear, it makes me miserable, reading about the billions which are 
being made by other people who operate taxi scams or electric scooter 
scams or retail scams or advertising sales scams. Philosophy, though, 
makes me happy. As Apollodorus says at the beginning of Plato's 
Symposium: "Whensoever either I myself talk of philosophy, or listen to 
others talking about it... I am delighted beyond measure, but whenever I 
hear your discussions about monied men and great proprietors, I am 
weighed down with grief."
This is perhaps why talk of Pooh Bear tends to delight us beyond 
measure. He is the wise Taoist sage who does nothing, is loved by all 
and does not excite envy or need security guards.
(...)


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