The banality of super-wealth

A few years ago I read about and noted that some retiring Microsoft executives, who had net worths in the $100 million range, seemed to be pursuing surprisingly banal goals with their newly bought freedom from work, like the one who wanted to practice bowling. Another one, Nathan Myhrvold, at least had trivial plans that I would consider defensible, like spending more time with his twin sons, whom he must have neglected during his Microsoft career. I found the lack of ambition discouraging at the time, considering that the men in Bill Gates's top team must have been smarter than 99% of the population, displayed life-long interests in science and technology, thought a deal about future technological progress and by the late 1990's acquired vast claims on the resources of society through their equity holdings in Microsoft. People who are dealt a hand of cards in life like that are able to do great things with their good fortune, like working towards engineered negligible senescence and the eventual conquest of death itself.

At least Myhrvold seems to have found something useful to do with his gifts. In a more general sense, however, the people who possess super-wealth seem to live in fundamentally banal ways because of the diminishing advantages in the kinds of goods they can buy -- as well as the ones they currently can't buy. Oh, they have access to elite classes of products and services that ordinary people can't afford -- monstrous houses, luxury automobiles, private jets, objets d'art, superior healthcare, private prep schools for their children etc. But for many of their other needs and wants they have to get them from the same sources the rest of us depend on. I heard Warren Buffett, who lives modestly by billionaire standards, state on television a few years ago that he sleeps on a mattress he bought at Sears, much like his middle-class Omaha neighbors. There is no boutique gas & electric company that services the homes of the super-rich, for example, nor are there boutique sources of medical consumables. When Warren Buffett's physician writes him a prescription for Lipitor, Buffett has to swallow pills from the same assembly line every other consumer of Lipitor has to use.

And yet, there are plenty of nontrivial goods that the super-wealthy simply cannot buy, no matter how big a check they can write. They have to breathe the same polluted air everyone else breathes; while they can put on sunblock, when they go outside they are exposed to the common UV levels; they have to eat many of the same contaminated foods the rest of us eat; unless they live in total seclusion like Howard Hughes, they are just as exposed to transportation accidents as the rest of us; etc.

And, most importantly of all, they are just as vulnerable to senescence and death as the rest of us, despite the few additional years they can squeeze out of their genomes through their better healthcare and "superior" social status. The wasteful and totally unnecessary mansions the super-rich build today are likely to become museums and destinations for vulgar tourists after they die, so why aren't they struck by the ultimate futility of the current social model about how they are supposed to use their resources? A mere fraction of the wealth they needlessly display could efficiently conquer aging and death in just a couple of decades of steady application towards scientific research. Doing that with your money would by no means seem banal!

After all, dying rich with a house full of expensive toys is still dying. "Memento mori," until you decide to do something about it with your latent financial powers.