Why Get Super Rich?

Regulars will know that I am a huge fan of David McRaney's podcast called You Are Not So Smart. Each episode takes an area of life which many of us think we understand and then politely and gently explains why we are usually wrong. Sometimes it debunks, occasionally it demythologises and almost always it has a guest who knows what they are talking about. There have been 271 episodes so if you enjoy it I just cost you a lot of your future listening time. No apology. Find it, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts.

The latest episode is a rebroadcast of an episode called Survival of the Richest and the guest is Douglas Rushkoff. Rushkoff is a media scholar, cyberpunk journalist and professor of digital economics. You may not have heard of him but he gave us a number of much-used expressions such as viral media, digital native and social currency. His documentaries are on YouTube. His books are available.

A group of billionaires called him in and asked him to address them about the future. And, surprisingly for Rushkoff, the majority of the conversation was about their 'bunker mentality'. The question that bothered them was how they might maintain control of their security once their money no longer had value. They were preparing for the inevitability of an apocalypse over which they would have no control. And Rushkoff's answer did not cut it for them. It's a fairly obvious answer. If you are nice to your security team now they will find it harder to shoot you in the face when they take over.

But these guys (yes guys) were addicted to insulating themselves. Insulating themselves from the problems of the future created by the shit they had done to people by the way had earned their money today. The US slang for this sort of person is prepper. They treat life as a computer game in which there is a secret to survival to the next level but you gotta find it.

If you often find yourself asking how people can be so rich and so stupid you should listen.

Bigger Barns

I did that trick last Sunday, at an early said communion service, of preaching blind. I took no notes and riffed on the readings. I used the material I came out with as the basis of a longer presentation later that morning. For those who feel tempted to say that it is appalling to preach without preparation I refer you to the forty years I have been doing this. That's gotta count for something.

Why am I owning up to this? Well, because in the volatile mix of adrenaline and terror that lack of preparation leads to (I once had seven members of the Liturgical Commission pitch up unexpectedly, doubling a congregation) I saw something new. Luke 12:13-21 goes like this:

Someone in the crowd said to (Jesus), 'Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.'

Jesus replied, 'Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?' Then he said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.'

And he told them this parable: 'The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

'Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, 'You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.''

'But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

'This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.'

The thing I noticed is this. It is in the context of a story told to illustrate the dangers of prioritising possessions. Jesus, having given another clue as to who he is not by refusing to be a judge, a task the great leaders of the Old Testament had to accept alongside leadership, warns about the uselessness of storing ridiculous excess.

The man in the story is a rich man. He has the option therefore of extending his property. He has the wealth. But he chooses to do this following an abundant year. He has wealth and then has abundance on top. He has no need of a good year. He is set up for ordinary years.

I note here that there is nowt wrong with wealth creation. But it carries with it a social responsibility - to invest in people (employ them) or in further business (employ more). And to share the wealth rather than store it. My one-liner was this - socialism is only necessary because capitalism doesn't see the work through.

Jesus wasn't saying that God will kill you if you do this. He was saying that all of us will give up our lives at some point and a barn full of grain will be no good to us then. If capitalists were socialists as well we wouldn't need socialists. I didn't say this in a sermon, but it may have been the great insight of New Labour.

'Eat, drink (and be merry) for tomorrow you die' is Paul's lifted-quote description of life without hope (1 Corinthians 15:32b). Paul pointed to the resurrection of Jesus as the only hope-giving event worth noting. But Jesus points to the responsibility of those who have the means to eat drink and be merry now (before the resurrection hope was a thing) to give practical help to others. The Gospels were more about now, then, than we ever realise. Still are.

Quotes of the Day

For those not appreciating this exercise, can I reassure you that we are within two years of the end of the book I am indexing. Two to ponder:

1121. Retribution is of two kinds: first, social, also known as justice; and second, individual, also known as revenge. The mark of a civilised society is that it promotes the messy frustrations and delays of the former over the false and instant consolation of the latter.
(Amol Rajan, theIpaper 19/4/12 on Norway's response to Anders Breivik's court behaviour)

1135. ...there are many kinds of wealth money cannot buy. You can buy education, but you cannot buy intelligence; you can buy designer clothes, but not style; cosmetics but not beauty; sex, but not love.
(A.C.Grayling, The Heart of Things)