Elon Musk dances with a robot after getting his trillion dollar payoff from Tesla.

By Bob Gaydos

If you’re a billionaire, why do you need to be a trillionaire?

This not-so-rhetorical question occurred to me the other day when I read that shareholders of Tesla had voted to give the company CEO Elon Musk a one trillion dollar bonus, salary, gift, whatever you wanna call it simply because he asked for it. In company shares.

This would make Musk, already the richest person on the planet, a million billion times richer I think. It’s hard to multiply all those zeros.

So I ask again, why? And, before I proceed any further, let me give due credit to singer Billie Eilish, all of 23 years old, who inspired this question when she had the presence of mind and maturity to ask a room full of very rich people, including some billionaires, “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire”?

Really. Why? Eilish, who already has a string of awards for such hits as “Bad Boy,” “Birds of a Feather” and others, with which I am also unfamiliar, asked the question as she accepted an award from WSJ Magazine.

But she didn’t just ask the question; she gave the reason behind it. As she addressed the celebrity-studded audience, she said: “We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than, kind of, ever, especially in our country. I’d say if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things, maybe give it to some people that need it.”

Umm, yeah. For the record, Ellish who has an estimated net worth of $50 million, also said she is donating $11.5 million of the proceeds from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour to support organizations fighting for food equity, climate justice, reducing carbon pollution, and combatting the climate crisis.

So, great, now that I have sufficiently buried the lead, what about Elon Musk? Why does he need to be a trillionaire? Why does he even need to ask for $1 trillion? And why do people think he deserves it?

He wants to replace people with machines that will do all the work and thinking they used to do. He spent a couple of months in Donald Trump‘s Oval Office office trying to eliminate every possible job in the federal government, while collecting information on American citizens. He dismantled USAID, cutting off crucial food supplies to starving people. He seems intent on populating the world with as many mini-versions of himself by as many willing partners as possible. All white.

He seems utterly divorced from all the problems of his native Africa and he has been known to throw an occasional Nazi salute. Yet he has convinced millions that he is a genius and also a genius at making money for them. (Sound familiar?) This, even though cars are still not really driving themselves and he’s nowhere close to putting anyone on Mars, curing cancer or ending violence in the Middle East.

The big corporate stockholders in Tesla, perhaps feeling Musk already had too much power and money, voted against giving him the trillion dollar payday, but the retail shareholders felt otherwise.

They voted— 75 percent of them no less— to give Musk up to $1 trillion over 10 years if the company meets a list of benchmarks such as selling 1 million humanoid robots. Again, to do much of the work that those people who voted for the big payday for him now still do.

That presumably would include artificial intelligence writing columns like this informing humans what a wonderful life they have now that they have nothing to do. They won’t even have to worry about “those people“ taking their jobs from them. “Those people” will presumably just go about doing whatever “those people” do. And Musk, in addition to producing robots and mini-Musks, will do whatever trillionaires do. In that regard at least, he really can be a trailblazer.

Paradise will be delivered, overnight by Amazon, courtesy of greed and willing ignorance.

***

(PS: We’re told that Mark Zuckerberg, who was in the audience, did not put a like on Eilish’s comments.)

By Bob Gaydos

A centuries-old horn stolen from Turkey, worth $3.5 million.

  This is a story about how the rich often get special treatment from our justice system. There is also a footnote to the story which raises at least some hope that the rich-get-off-easy scenario may soon be amended.

     First, a favor for the rich guy.

     Michael Steinhardt, a billionaire who is used to having pretty much anything he wants, recently got an early birthday present from Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr.: A stay-out-of-jail card.

   The gift came with a message, a stern warning if you will: Tsk, tsk, Michael. You know better than that. Now round up all those weird old things cluttering up all your homes and give them back to their rightful owners. And don’t ever do that again. (Signed), Cy

    Steinhardt’s lawyer said his client, a hedge fund founder who has been accused of sexual harassment in the past, was “pleased” with Vance’s gift. Most rich people Vance lets off the hook usually are.

    As he prepares to retire, Vance provided one more piece of evidence confirming that his scales of justice are weighted heavily in favor of the rich.

Michael Steinhardt

  Steinhardt, described in news accounts as a philanthropist and collector of antiquities, was ordered to return some $70 million worth of those antiquities to their rightful owners. People from whom they were stolen, in other words. The people of 11 nations, actually.

   He was also told to refrain from this practice, or else. The “or else” part was not spelled out. Two days after Vance’s  announcement, Steinhardt celebrated his 81st birthday, presumably suitably chastised.

    This “punishment” for aggressively seeking, purchasing and possessing 180 pieces of stolen property was the culmination of a four-year investigation by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan prosecutor’s office. It involved investigators and officials in the following countries: Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey, a veritable Who’s Who of places one might shop for antiquities. And Steinhardt was a frequent shopper. He also apparently knew where to find the good stuff.

Cy Vance

In a prepared statement, Vance said: “For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe. His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers, and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection.”

       Despite all those traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers and tomb raiders with whom Steinhardt did business, Vance said he decided not to prosecute Steinhardt in order to return the stolen subject to their rightful owners as quickly as possible.  Suddenly, time is of importance with these extremely old treasures.

    Vance also said he wanted to protect the identity of witnesses around the globe. Future tipsters. So thoughtful. 

     In comparison, studies of his office’s prosecution rates show that low-level offenders (people in possession of less-pricey stolen property, for example) from Manhattan represent a significantly higher population of Rikers Island in New York City, than similar miscreants from Brooklyn, which has a significantly higher population of all types. Hey, if you do the crime in Manhattan, Vance says you gotta pay the time.       

    Then there are Vance’s past decisions not to prosecute movie producer Harvey Wasserman on sexual harassment charges, or to charge Donald or Ivanka Trump on the usual fraud stuff. People who care about ethics in government have also criticized Vance”s practice of accepting campaign donations from lawyers and law firms whose clients had dealings with his office. The connection between money and influence is, well, elementary.

       Now for the hopeful news in this story, the footnote. 

        This is Vance’s swan song in Manhattan. He’s retiring. That means the new, eager DA will get to work with New York Attorney General Letitia James on putting Trump and his cohorts behind bars on a variety of tax fraud charges. 

       James decided not to run for governor and to focus on the continuing Trump prosecution she has been working on with the Manhattan DAs office. She’s already forced Andrew Cuomo to resign as governor because of sexual harassment allegations. Nailing Trump would make her a political rock star as well as establishing a different, more balanced, atmosphere in the Manhattan DA’s office.

        Maybe Vance finally decided this was one political favor to a rich friend he couldn’t deliver. And maybe all those museums that slapped Steinhart’s name on galleries because of his “generosity“ need to take it down. At least his ego will pay a price.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.