The Asshole Bubble

Why Do So Many Oligarchs Treat Others with Such Contempt?

We live in a Golden Age of Assholes.

Elon Musk is an asshole. The President is an asshole. The President of Russia is a consummate asshole.

All the tech oligarchs seem to be following the trend. They are special. They have agency. We little people are pawns they move around chessboards and can dispose of at will.

Their shit don’t stink.

We see this in Jeff Bezos, who was never an asshole before he got super-wealthy, or didn’t seem to be. We see this in Ken Griffin, the hedge fund gazillionaire who whines when New York taxes his pied a terre. (That’s a great name for second home, ain’t it? Really feeds the meme.)

The shit rolls downhill. The head of Standard Chartered, a London bank, bragged he was getting rid of “lower value people” in announcing thousands of layoffs. His friends at Fox tried to walk it back, but he meant what he said, and he said what he meant. An asshole is faithful 100%.

This is happening while people who are successful outside business are finding the value of humility. Taylor Swift seems like a good person, and her fiancée is, by all reports, a good teammate. Our top basketball players are plying their trade in San Antonio and Oklahoma City. They seem to respect their success and one another. Two words. Tom Hanks.

Maybe it’s because celebrity is so easy to lose. Blake Lively practically went into hiding after losing a lawsuit against Justin Baldoni (I’m sorry, who?), and even husband Ryan Reynolds was spattered by the fallout. (Speaking of which, what’s a Rob Mac? Sounds like a high-end burger chain with glass-like shards in the patties, like Dubai chocolates.)

Why Only Business?

Certainly, a lot of smiles in CelebrityLand are pasted-on. But scandal can leave you an empty shell by the side of the road very quickly in music, in acting, or in athletics. There’s a spotlight on those people that businessmen aren’t bothered by.

Why is that?

One reason is we’re in an economic boom. At least investors are. I won’t lie, but my money makes a lot more money than I make these days. A lifetime of saving brought me a reward, so I see why some are enjoying these days that the rest of us hate.

Another reason is that in lacking sex appeal, fallen businessmen are forgotten quickly, while successful ones can hide from the media, behind PR people and armed guards. Even the failures usually get some grace, like Chip Wilson of Lululemon.

But until recently, most rich folks didn’t go out of their way to prove just what tone-deaf jerks they were. That’s new. Well, sort of. We have had people like Chamath Palahapiya (SPACs), Travis Kalanick (Uber), and Adam Neumann (WeWork) before. They came and they went.

The Age of AI is something different. There’s a premium in the AI business for enormous expectations. Hubris drives success, even before there is success. Then there are the ginormous fortunes being made. WTF is a trillionaire, anyway?

There’s also a high wire act being played by these loons. Sam Altman could fall hard, OpenAI keeps losing money, and everyone in the business hates him. We stand around like a vaudeville crowd looking at Harry Houdini in a water tank.

We know there’s a trick, we expect him to get out of it, but what if he doesn’t? Wouldn’t that be fun?

To be in the audience when that happens, and overdose on schadenfreude?

We Have Met The Enemy

This means some of the blame for all this lies with us. Are we not entertained?

It does take enormous self-confidence to put yourself out there and pontificate on the faults of others. Whatever happened to Nate Silver? (Ask Scott Galloway.) The sell-by date of people, even in my business, is incredibly short.

In the end, I think, we all take after the Mad King. The great men (and many of the women) of our era will see their reputations in tatters once the fall comes, and we all know if will come, soon.

Just not soon enough.