Human Worth, Bernie Sanders and Elon Musk

"....When you're rich they think you really know....."

Bernie Sanders has been sounding an alarm about America’s descent into oligarchy for some time. Sanders recently thanked Elon Musk for making it clear to Americans that Musk and other billionaires are exerting dominance over our politics, government, media and economic lives. Now we are seeing Donald Trump surrender essential American government functions and institutions to his major (over $250 million) donor Elon Musk. Musk and his underlings are working overtime to decimate key government agencies, like the FDA, CDC, FAA, IRS and more. Why would America’s working class voters be persuaded that a man like Donald Trump can solve their problems? In everyday discussions, online, in person, on air, Americans demonstrate their irrational reverence for those with lots of money. How? Americans of all political stripes have a cultural habit of talking about what someone is “worth”, followed by how much money they have In his recent speech “What the Oligarchs Really Want”, Saunders himself uses the phrase:

”And it is not just power that they want. Despite the incredible wealth they have they want more, and more and more. Their greed has no end. Today, Mr. Musk is worth $402 billion, Mr. Zuckerberg is worth $252 billion and Mr. Bezos is worth $249 billion. With combined wealth of $903 billion, these 3 people own more wealth than the bottom half of American society — 170 million people.”

Words are powerful. It’s a telling turn of phrase. I was a young mother living in New York City when a Canadian friend asked me about it.

My son was two years old when Michaela and her grandmother, Francoise, came into our lives. Francoise was taking care of Michaela while her mother worked, and I was a stay out home mom. We met at a playgroup for toddlers where we lived. Michaela and Sean were immediate friends, as were Francoise and I.

It was great as a mother in my twenties to benefit from the kind wisdom of Francoise, who had an interesting life full of travel and adventures, and who was absolutely in love with her granddaughter (as grandmothers are). Being from another culture, Francoise had much to share: from how she served tea and decorated her home, to discussions on cultural differences.

Francoise once asked me “Why do Americans say someone is ‘worth’ the amount of money they have? “ We both knew the phrase was a kind of shorthand to express the amount of someone’s wealth. But I immediately understood what she was getting at. This was during the mid 80s, when the phrase “greed is good”, from the movie “Wall Street” had come about. I hadn’t thought about it before. Like the proverbial fish surrounded by water that they are not aware of, the American way of saying someone is “worth” how much money they have, and the implications of that phrase, just hadn’t registered with me. To Francoise, the phrase was jarring.

“Cathy, other cultures don’t talk about people and their money in such terms. This is the only place I’ve heard it.” She leaned in “and it’s ugly.” Of course it is. Human worth has nothing to do with money.

Looking at it a bit further, it’s seems clear that many people just assume a wealthy person has other worthy qualities when that may not be the case.

I’ve mentioned my father’s love of Broadway musicals before. Another favorite of his was “Fiddler or the Roof”. It’s a story about a Jewish family living in Russia, struggling to maintain their traditions under an oppressive dictatorial tsarist regime (at the end of the play they are emigrating to the US to escape authoritarian oppression). The father, Tevye, sings the song “If I Were a Rich Man” which includes these lyrics about how he believes great wealth would change his life:

The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise.
"If you please, Reb Tevye..."
"Pardon me, Reb Tevye..."
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes!
And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong.
When you're rich, they think you really know!

“When you’re rich they think you really know!” That was my Dad’s favorite line. And he was teaching us - big money doesn’t mean the person who has it is wise. Beware.

Perhaps the destruction to US institutions being done right before our eyes by the wealthiest man in the world (and the president he bought) is a lesson to break an unhealthy deference to those with money. Even more important, perhaps it’s a lesson not to equate our own value with how much money we have.

After all, who is the unelected Elon Musk to be destroying American agencies?

The Federal employees who are being treated like trash by Musk and Trump have actual expertise in what they do. Their work serves the greater good. Pruning Federal spending is one thing. Taking a hatchet to essential agencies and trashing these employees and the work they do is another. Do we need to learn their work is valuable by experiencing the pain of losing their contributions? I hope not, but it’s looking that way.

Just like it’s looking like we may have to learn the value of vaccines by experiencing outbreaks of preventable communicable diseases. Like measles.

Here in Florida, at a very local level, a public official put herself and a donor at the front of the line for vaccines. Major politicians got the COVID-19 vaccine themselves, but have talked out of both sides of their mouth about vaccines. Here in Florida and in other states, vaccine hesitancy and mask refusal have been cultivated as a political tactic to agitate voters and leverage support for candidates who are really running to implement a masked agenda for profiteering corporate charter schools and rubber stamped profiteering overdevelopment.

In this 21st century gilded age, it’s not about the public good. It’s about private profit.

Vanessa Baugh, former Manatee County Commissioner who created a priority list for the COVID-19 vaccine, which included herself and a major donor developer

By all appearances, Elon Musk is no different than local developers here in Florida who bankroll City and County Commissioner campaigns so they can get foolish development decisions approved and infrastructure paid for by taxpayers. Musk bought himself a President so he can get rid of agencies that get in the way of his business.

For example, this past weekend the Musk Rat Pack fired workers at the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) office of neurological and physical medicine devices. This FDA office oversees clinical trial applications for the firm Neuralink’s so-called brain-computer interface devices. These are computer chips, implanted in the human brain, which are intended to link the human brain to computers. Neuralink is a Musk company. Effective clinical trail oversight will be critical to ensuring the safety and efficacy of such devices and the privacy of patients. The fox guarding the hen house doesn’t work Neither does the Muskrat.

We are in a second gilded age, where 21st century robber barons are grabbing power and working to destroy institutions which have made our country great. It will be up to all of us to do our part to put an end to this corruption.

We can start by ending the American practice of saying “Elon Musk is worth $402 billion”, or “Mark Zuckerberg is worth $252 billion” or “Jeff Bezos is worth $249 billion”. They aren’t. That’s how much money they have, not their worth. A human’s worth is not determined by how much money they have. Human value cannot be measured by money. Great wealth is a gift, maybe a curse, and definitely a test. We are all being tested.