For anyone born without someone in the room recording the very event on their phone, knows old-school is the OG old school. With that in mind, the mention of billionaires likely evokes J.D. Rockefeller, J. Paul Getty, Howard Hughes, Henry Ford; Warren Buffett. Maybe Aristotle Onassis. Men who for the most part, made tangible stuff that made stuff happen.
Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967) was often mentioned by exasperated 1960s dads – albeit in more familiar terms – with “Who do you think I am…Ali Khan? I’m not made of money, you know..!” No kid in the history of childhood knew who Ali Khan was, other than someone richer than your dad. Now, as adults we bandy the word “billion” about in a similar way, without much of an idea really, of exactly how sizeable that is.
Celebrity, Wealth and Cultural Confusion
The ‘Golden Greek’ Onassis was already famous as one of the world’s richest men, and remained a focus in the public eye mostly because of marrying JFK’s widow Jackie.
Indeed, she was the OG “Jackie O” before her moniker was hijacked by one half of a Sydney-based radio broadcast that recently came to an end, more than two decades too late. A show that managed to garner Australia’s most lucrative $200 million 10-year contract is proof that the media conflates “lucrative” and “ludicrous”.
The original Jackie O and the crass-content copy are definitely not interchangeable.
Bloodlines, Empires and Brutal Ends
Until 1916, there was no such thing as a billionaire. At least technically, it seems.
Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918) the last Emperor of Russia was one, having inherited the centuries-deep, blood-soaked wealth of the Romanov Imperial dynasty. Somehow it doesn’t count, with much of it tied up in the state. Having what amounted to all the money in the world – specifically if your world was Finland, Chile or Romania – offered no protection against the Bolsheviks. Even as huge, hard jewels sewn into your corset.
What was a tyrannical regime came to a brutal end. Who knows what Prince Philip thought of the ruthless demise of his great aunt, wife Tsarina Alexandra, and his five first cousins once removed, removed altogether three years before he was born.
Were it not for all that, Queen Mary of Teck would not have been able to purchase the smuggled Vladimir Tiara, hand it down to her granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II, and have it become her favourite piece of heady headgear. Rumour has it that Markle’s request to wear it on her wedding day was outrightly denied.
Gruesome, glittery, and a grandiose grifter: extreme wealth appears to brings these three things together a lot.
Gilded Age Transformations
The end of the American Civil War and obduracy brought not only profit for Rockefeller and a smattering of hugely successful businessmen of the Gilded Age in late 1800s. Rapidly and profoundly, they transitioned a society from predominantly self-employed craftsmen and day labourers, to one in which almost everyone would work for wages.
Revolutionary, bastardry and being a robber baron are not exclusive: often they’re one and the same. The ostentatious display of unimaginable wealth, cultural superficiality and political corruption are polygamous bedfellows to which we have become uncomfortably accustomed. Being numb to it is a perpetual underlying state, with pro-business legislation and pro-worker rhetoric the vicious sibling rivals of this dysfunctional family tree.
Billionaires Then and Now
Billionaires of old were older.
They may have started in their 20s and 30s, but with few exceptions they hit the Three Comma Club when they were in their 50s or 70s, and took much longer to reach the point beyond caring how they look. Most were millionaires first. Not instant billionaires when the hot water of the stock exchange hit the dried noodle of their business venture.
“Eccentric”, “frugal”, “obsessive” and “phobic” are common descriptors for Hughes, Getty, Rockefeller, and Ford. It comes across as curiously quaint, rather than unbearably ugly and eerily emetic when applied to Zuckerberg, Gates, Musk, Bezos, Altman, Wexner, Page and Brin. Off-the-charts uber creep Epstein’s death (or not) has amassed more conspiracy theories than JFK being assassinated on Apollo 11 with Princess Diana at the controls.
Maybe it was a simpler time that had old timers viewed as titans, instead of tall, tantrum-throwing toddlers.
It seems we have billionaire man-babies now. A proliferation of geeks trying to prove that testosterone did not bypass them. That their simpering psychological needs are not what drives them to “move fast and break things” before they even know where the hell they’re moving to; and how wide ranging and irreparable their breakages are on a global scale.
A handful of over-inflated egos with bloated bank balances decided that a superhuman level of artificial intelligence is exactly what the world needs. It’s a decision that can only come from emotional and social voids filled to capacity with the expanding foam of nerd revenge.
Power, Influence, and Ethics
About a third of billionaire wealth comes from fields with high levels of cronyism and government connections. Even those whose fortunes are made in sectors not prone to same level corruption, commonly display unethical behaviour. Whether it be leveraging unfair competition, the poor treatment of their workers, or political influence bought with the buckets of money at their disposal, these are the people in a position of immense power.
It’s not to say that every billionaire on the planet possesses concerning personality traits.
Undoubtedly, not all seek to be famous, idolised or even publicly recognised. However, it stands to reason that those who do, seek like-minded company. A lot of unearned faith is put into people with a lot of money; an unfortunate upshot based on little more than the fact that they have a lot of money. The US presidency attests that.
AI, Singularity, and the Future
We already live the experience of large scale billionaire influence through their media and platform ownership. We already know how easily information, data and algorithms are manipulated. We are routinely challenged with deciphering what is real, and what is not. Humans are becoming more corralled and robotic, while robots are becoming more autonomous and human. The gap is narrowing at a harrowing rate.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil made a prediction in 2005 that ‘the Singularity‘ will occur in 2045 – where AI overtakes human brain capabilities. In 2019, plant physiologist and astrobiologist Professor Emeritus Joseph Gale of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his team published their research that exponential technological advances make this event more imminent – possibly shaving a decade off that initial forecast.
The uncertainty is not that it will happen, but rather when.
The scalp-tingling, shallow breath irony is that the greatest achievement of humankind will be its last.
That alone makes old-style tycoons seem as innocuous as Scrooge McDuck and Monty Burns. How many quadrillions will be spent, how many petawatts of energy, how much damage to our planet will it take to get there? By whose standards is this impending “greatest achievement”? Billionaires of the 21st century?
These are not patient people. Democratic governance means nothing to them. They have no interest at all in the general concerns of the majority like housing and healthcare, and are openly aggravated by the concept of humans maintaining precedence over AI. Like a two-year-old’s scatolia, these tech oligarchs advertise their messy ambitions without apology.
It’s true that throughout history, breakthroughs bring visions of dystopia and thoughts of despair.
What makes this one particularly chilling is its hellbent trajectory of transmuting humanity with nothing standing in its way. Conceivably, billionaire visions of eutopia are cacotopia for the rest of us, given that more than $US200 million has already been spent to ensure AI regulations are not implemented.
It doesn’t get creepier than that.