Whoever Dies With The Most Toys Wins

Forbes tells us that Elon Musk was, for a bit, the world's first trillionaire, until market fluctuations dropped him back in the ranks of mere billionaires. He remains the first among equals in that pond, remaining by far the world's wealthiest person. A title widely reported as both amazing and laudable.

At the same time we have President Trump attempting to explain how it is just fine that he uses the power of his office to line his, and his family's, pockets with billions of dollars while simultaneously spending millions of our tax dollars on vanity projects like the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool debacle, the White House East Wing Ballroom, and his desire for a huge "triumphal" arch.

Taken together these two tidbits of contemporary culture would seem to echo the t-shirt declaration "Whoever Dies With the Most Toys Wins." An assertion that success in America is best measured by the number of digits in one's bank account. It is an infantile perspective, and one that runs counter to some foundational values that have undergirded America in these past 250 years. I refer to the notion that what really defines an exemplery individual is what they have created, invented, or discovered. Not what they possessed.

Now, certainly, bringing those discoveries to the market often came with monetary success. The early robber barons, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt and Morgan were no "woke Dumocrats" to borrow that phrase from the President. Altho' at times - often later in life - altruism became a defining characteristic of some, as seen in The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Libraries. A perspective strongly reflected in the contemporary work of The Gates Foundation.

A couple of questions arise as we consider the implications of the uber-rich in American society - who, as I write this are gathered at the Millionaire's Retreat in the Linton Lodge, where I, perhaps unfairly, assume philanthropy will not top the agenda.

First, and most importantly, is what is the meaning of success in contemporary America. And here I wander into what I consider to be one of the primary dichotomies in life: the creation/consumption dichotomy. The two parts are pretty self-explanatory:

Creation: Making something, often where nothing previsously existed. This is perhaps most obvious in the arts. An artist creates an image, sculpture, musical composition, novel, poem, dance, that has never existed before - a creation. 

But sometimes one overlooks other incredibly creative fields. Thomas Edison had 1,093 U.S. patents - obviously including the lightbulb, and is often credited with "inventing inventing" in his Menlo Park laboratory. I write these Wall posts using a combination of software and hardware that result from a long chain of creative acts. Architecture, engineering, the hard sciences are all creative activities.

Consumption: We constantly consume. There is no way to avoid it. Follow yourself through the day and it is often simply a trail of consumption. We get up. We consume breakfast, either at home or on our way to work. Maybe while driving or riding to work we consume music or information from a variety of possible sources. When arriving at work we consume our work load - which may be creative, but perhaps something made possible by consuming the information provided by other sources. At the end of the work day the consumption process is simply reversed.

Our life consists of this blend of creation and consumption. Success is defined, personally, socially, or culturally - in the Musk/Trump model of success - by monetary consumption, as in the acquisition of treasure.

Musk can argue that the creative aspect of his life - PayPal, Tesla, Space X, xAI, neurolink - undergird his financial empire. But his involvement in these ventures quickly became administrative for which he was richly compensated, either in salary or in stock provisions. [In a somewhat meaningless aside - Musk, one assumes, named his electric vehicles after Nikola Tesla who - despite having bested Edison in the "war of the currents" thus assuring us of the AC current that powers all the outlets in our homes - died alone and penniless in a New York hotel at age 84.] 

The Trump model is more nuanced, one in which political power and intimidation become the tools with which financial rewards are acquired through "no bid" contracts or other "friendly" relationships and contracts for himself and family members.

The point, I believe, as individuals in this current social climate, is to remember that it is our choice to balance creativity and consumption in our own lives.

The American Dream, as I understand it, was never to become fabulously wealthy no matter what the cost. Rather the dream was the ability to live in a free and equal society, to do meaningful, pleasurable work, and to provide for ones family -  the end result of which, and the primary goal, was happiness. For me, while realizing the inevitability of daily consumption, I have always found my greatest satisfaction, my most enduring happiness in creativity, whether crafting lectures at the university, doodling/drawing, or authoring these sometimes rambling posts for you.

For a broader social perspective - one that might provide some bench marks for assessing the Musk/Trump examples - we might consider the "give or take" yardstick. What did an individual give to a society, and what did they take from that society. Using these tools, success looks rather different than when measured soley by personal wealth.

Musk can point in the "giving" column to the aforementioned technological businesses. However those must be measured against the "take" column of amassing more money than anyone else in the world. And also in the “take” column one must include his time as a senior advisor in the Trump White House and co-lead of the "Department of Government Efficiency" which led to thousands of non-millionaires losing their jobs.

The Trump tally is quite fraught, with promises and claims in the "give" column seeming in stark contrast with actual results. In the "give" column were assertions that he would end the still-continuing war in Ukraine on "day one."  There was also the claim that as a "peace maker" he would eschew any involvement in foreign wars. Currently the war in Iran, which Trump started as an ally of Israel, is in its fifth month costing, according to pentagon sources between 80 to 100 billion dollars, 414 American injuries and and 14 American deaths. 

In the "take" column, according to Forbe's magazine "Donald Trump has brought in an extraordinary $2.4 billion in total business revenue and asset sales during his recent year back in public office," and has spent hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars on the vanity projects mentioned above. Over all, even ignoring using the office to attack his political adversaries and pack the government with "yes" men and women, not much give and an incredible amount of take.

So, in my mind, neither of these two incredibly wealthy and powerful men actually define success. Rather they demonstrate a venal and grasping lifestyle more to be censured than emulated.

But what do I know? I'm just - as I'm sure our President would call me - "a woke, low IQ, dumocrat, who prefers windmills to oil wells and coal mines!"