Speaking of Railroads

[Michael Bailey]

> but I wonder if you couldn't chart a graph where each billionaire reduces
> the well being of a certain number of people by x amount annually?
>

(David, that may sound like a stupid comment, so I can't leave that
as my last word though I'm getting tired of my own comments here!)

this notion that billionaires represent a net loss to the economy
as a whole, at any rate, is what a person might think if they take an
anti-rich (not you, rich...) attitude, or perhaps a Marxist one...
I think there's something about surplus value and how it's used
that Marxism seizes upon and suggests that this is somehow mulcted
and turned against its producers

a sunnier view of the process would take into account the fact that
a certain concentration of surplus value is necessary to undertake
any big projects, that while Social Darwinism is an abomination still
there are "good business practices" that enforce themselves one way
or another,
that the suppression of philanthropy noted in IV isn't completely true-to-life
in all cases, and so forth...

the question of billionaires and what, if anything, they should feel
guilty for, is one of the interesting conundra IV presents...
and of course I for one miss the "mad explicator" mode Pynchon
adopted in GR: rather than engage me in seizing upon clues and
making me run with them myself,
TR-madex-P would engage in supply-side literature, letting notions trickle
down from a wealthier perspective than Doc's...

(this is not to say that IV is without its own charms...its compactness,
its character development, evocation of era, and straightforwardness
made it fun for me to read)

Billionaires to ponder:
the Beanie Baby guy - what harm has he done?
Kaufman and Broad - built a whole bunch of houses, bought an insurance company
Bernie Kornfeld - invented the conglomerate
Bill Gates - harshly dominated the computer field, laid waste to competitors
Carlos Slim - cool name
the bin Laden clan - yeah, there's a bunch of nice foax...
Carl Icahn - corporate raider
Howard Hughes - germophobic fingers stuck in a whole lotta pies
Bob Hope - owned half of Cali, didn't he?
the aforementioned Mr Buffett
J Paul Getty
Rockefellers
Sam Walton
Rupert Murdoch
Ted Turner
The silver loving Hunt brothers
Those lovable Kochs (not Ed, this is a Kansas clan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries)

Sorting this mixed bag out would be more work than Doc would
probably want to undertake.  I'm of a "live and let live" persuasion,
so other than hoping one of those guys doesn't buy the company I work
for and feel the need to rationalize its assets in pursuit of surplus value
so as to go on to the next conquest (or pull a leveraged buyout and have
to add interest expenses to a budget that apparently already doesn't stretch
to good insurance coverage for employees or meaningful annual - or, hey,
even *merit* - raises, for going on 10 years now...)  I'm willing to
accept their
presence in the universe...

though after having looked at Gustavus Myers's accounts of how
the vast fortunes of his time came together, I'd be interested in anybody
telling me how I can be happier about the phenomenon...
(being of an optimistic bent, a glass-half-full kinda guy)