After every major snow storm, people have stories to tell. Usually about getting stuck in their car for hours or losing their electricity for days. In this case, the lessons we less dramatic, but more enduring.
On the first two days, no paper delivery; so when they came the next morning, all three editions were bundled together. If ever you need to be reminded how fleeting -- often fatuous -- our times really are, compare the coverage. What was a blaring headline one day, is a page 12 item 48 hours later. What was a big revelation one day, may only be a small retraction this day. Yesterday's hero is today's old news, and so their 15 minutes is up.
There was a parallel lesson. Trudging through the snow to dig out the editions, you're probably grumbling. Not the kids out there...! They're giggling. With joy and abandon, for what are un-plowed streets to you are stout snow forts to them. To you what means you can't get to work or to the supermarket, to them means that most wondrous of all days...! A free day with which they can now use snow storms for what they were really meant.
One more lesson, one you might miss in the usual rush of a usual day. That intimidatingly long essay on the op-ed page about the power of today's "new plutocracy."
Wait...now before you shrug that off as old new, what's new is their new. enormous, border-less reach. Billionaires from around the world who have more in common with one another than they do with their own national government, and their own everyday nationals. Holding up to 90% of the planet's worth, they have become a new global nation of power brokers with names like Gates, Buffet, Koch, Soros, Pinchuk, and El-Erian who periodically gather in economic summits like the Bilderberg Group, the Boa Forum, and Google's Zeitgeist Conference.
Unlike the inherited aristocrats of old, these are the self-made meritocrats of now whose allegiance is more to one another than to any government. Indeed, they are closer to a world organization than the UN ever dreamed.
When Ayn Rand lionized her master-of-the-universe John Galt, he was a fictional character. Today's billionaire super-elites are quite real. And for them, self-interest is the mother of all rationalization when they roar at any president or prime minister daring to say their wealth should be taxed proportionate to its enormity.
Journalist Chrystia Freeland says it well: "The lesson of history is that, in the long run super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth." Some are currently sharing via their philanthropic foundations. Others...? Well, they could take a lesson from the kids building their forts out there. Even the biggest snows eventually melt...
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The few can't trample the many forever.
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