From Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich pg 57-58. I’m very interested in how social expectations are generated amongst elites, how these in turn shape competitive pressures and the implications these have for how they orientate themselves towards non-elites. I’ve been looking through journalistic sources for examples of the super-rich complaining about their money not going far enough, as well as cases where this led to corporate malfeasance in an attempt to sustain a lavish lifestyle.
“ There’s an interaction between the global elite , as you call them, and the media, as follows, which has to do with sort of the, for lack of a term, sexiness of it all,” Eric Schmidt told me in his Google office in Mountain View. “Magazines are now publishing the destinations that everyone goes to. So, there’s a list, okay? So let me tell you what the list is. There’s Davos. There’s the Oscars. There’s the Cannes Film Festival. There’s Sun Valley. There’s the TED conference. There’s Teddy Forstmann’s conference. There’s UN Week, Fashion Week. In London, there is Wimbledon Week, which is the last week of June. “These have become global events, when they were local events,” Schmidt explained. “They’re not nearly as much fun as they were when I was reading about them in the paper. Because the pictures were much better than the reality. But because I see myself as a global citizen, I go anyway. … The math is that people want to be where other smart and interesting people are. … There’s a perception you have to be there. And globalization, air travel, allows you to do this. So, the people that you’re describing travel a lot. And they also have multiple homes, right? So, the rigors of travel are not so bad if you have a home in London. I don’t have these things, by the way.”
Mark Carrigan 