Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos are not billionaires here to save us. Photo / AP
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos are not billionaires here to save us. Photo / AP
Jeff Bezos feasts on roasted iguana, Elon Musk shoots a sports car into space, and Peter Thiel may want to drink the blood of the young. These are no ordinary lives. When they picnic, if they do, imagine the blanket beneath their billionaire backsides. Sumptuous. Padded. Exotic.
Consider the number of blankets that Jeff Bezos would own. More blankets than Jeff could ever need.
Now think of a street on your suburb where the people don't have many blankets at all. In fact some of them have none. And the nights are cold. And if they had more blankets then they'd be a bit warmer and their lives would be a bit better. They'd get less sick, they'd experience a level of comfort that we'd consider a bare minimum to exist.
If you think Jeff should hand out his blankets, congratulations, you have a heart. Photo / AP
Ask yourself, what sort of person should Jeff be? Should he be the sort of person who hands out blankets to those who don't have enough? Or should he be the sort of person who talks about having so many blankets that the only thing he can think of doing with these blankets is building a blanket fort on Mars?
If you think Jeff should hand out his blankets, congratulations, you have a heart. If you think the second Jeff is the best Jeff then maybe you need to revisit your belief structure. Or you're Jeff Bezos.
"Oh David," you might say. "What if Jeff had an amazing idea and took a risk and that amazing idea is what generated all his blankets?"
Does anyone really get all their blankets solely off their own bat? Or was there a set of societal structures in place that helped them get to where they are in the blanket oligarchy? And if so isn't it incumbent upon him to share the benefits of these advantages?
Peter Thiel may want to drink the blood of the young. Photo / Brett Phibbs
And besides, so what? If Jeff has more blankets than any one person could possibly need then why does Jeff not hand some out to those who truly need them? To hoard blankets for no reason other than to have more blankets while people are literally dying from a lack of blankets is evil.
"Some of those people may not have earned blankets" you might argue. And if we get to a stage as a species where the right to not freeze to death at night is dictated by your "earning ability" then we're at the "blanket forts on Mars" stage of Jeff.
And the thing is, there will come a tipping point. People will sit in their homes without blankets, and they'll look over to Jeff's house and they'll see blankets everywhere and they'll think "If we just took some of his blankets in order for us to stay alive, Jeff would still have some blankets, and we'd also have some and that is not a bad thing. The distribution of blankets is not even. Jeff does not need that many blankets"
And logically they'd be right: in the last year, 82 per cent of new blankets went to just 1 per cent of the world's population.
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos are not billionaires here to save us. They are blanket-tycoons whose singular pursuit of blankets has meant that so many others are freezing. And they seem to revel in implementing policies that take more blankets away from people. Or defang their ability to get more.
We may admire them for their blanket collection, but in the end if blankets are what we all need then those with the most who aren't prepared to share are going to have to deal with a reckoning. And it's going to be a hell of a thing when the iguana bites back.
David Cormack. Photo / Supplied
David Cormack is the co-founder of communications and PR firm, Draper Cormack Group. He has worked for the Labour Party, the Green Party and for National.
