Here in America, the nucleus of the capitalist world, we tend to lionize wealth. Jeff Bezos is in nearly every chapter of a book about the hidden habits of genius, the 2024 Super Bowl—a spectacle of American cultural value interspersed with football plays—was the most watched in Bowl history far outstripping other cultural conflagasms like the Oscars, and there appears to exist no word that can more quickly inflame the so-called fiscal conservative than ‘tax’.
Football represents America in ways that embarrass apple pie. A sport no longer justifiable to inflict on brains too young to understand or consent to the lifetime ramifications of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, there is something particularly American about the mistaken belief that wearing a helmet insulates the brain from any trauma and then continuing to argue in favor of the helmeted-ness of football playing for un-consenting children long after the science is clear. That many of those watching the Super Bowl are themselves of a coddled generation of helicopter parenting that counts the bicycle helmet as one of its innovations is a bit ironic.
Tuning in to the Super Bowl gives one a gaudy glimpse into cosmetic American cultural incentive. An estimated $600M is spent on commercial advertising, more than the yearly GDP of 8 separate nations. Meanwhile, the halftime show continues to be a spectacular choreographic testament to our capacity to work together. And if you’re not there for the sport or the marketing mania, there’s the drama of a glorious fusion of pop music, pop culture, and pop sport. Whether a pop musician would manage to fly from Tokyo to Las Vegas quickly enough to watch her beau…make a few catches and scream at his coach as it would turn out…was a storyline before the outset. She made it, and all was well. Joining her were 899 other apparently less pop individuals that thought this spectacle so important to see or be seen at that they also needed a private jet to get there in time. None of which is energetically justifiable by any metric of sanity.
In the world of getting things from one place to another irrespective of their actual value, enter Jeff. Bezos is alleged to exhibit, among other things, the genius-like trait of oppositional thinking. Having identified a surge in internet traffic, he realized that a new paradigm would involve access to and existence on the web, that the web would deliver answers, communication, and so on faster than previously possible. Brilliant. Having recognized the solution, he then hunted for a ‘problem’, eventually settling on shopping. Genius. Let’s get more stuff to more places at more speed. Some of it will even be helpful. Happily, the mainstream economics of the day support us in ignoring the externalities. Visionary. If we continue to tell his story as some laudable episode of paradigmatic problem-solving with an unapologetic affinity for efficiency, instead of the apex of a profit-seeking weaseling bereft of the moral fortitude not to exploit others in the slavitude of extreme wealth, we mis-identify what is critical about incentive structure in judging action. Part of the kind of genius this genius has is in avoiding…
Tax. Where to begin? It’s theft. Ignoring the technical and social structures upon which every bit of civilization rests, extreme individualism (the norm in our country) argues that the individual is responsible for every bit of everything that comes his way. There was a time when Noam Chomsky laughed Murray Rothbard out of the room for the preposterousness of hyper-individualism that has somehow come to dominate much of official economic philosophy and underlies most mainstream political assumption. Luckily it’s easy to measure that which comes in (usually to bank accounts) and harder to account for that which goes out ( mostly workers’ energy and usually into the atmosphere). In a bit of magical thinking that would make the most ardent resister of Enlightenment proud, we cling to the notion that millionaires (much less billionaires) are worth it. In total ignorance of the reality of interconnectedness, colonial societies have played apologist for the constant plunder of material wealth across the last six or so centuries.
So we’re rich. Excellent. Does it matter if we’re also concussed and distracted, hard and shallow? A side effect of inebriation and addiction is that it is harder to notice or to care that one is hindered at all. It seems like a good idea to score a couple more touchdowns before the playing field gets unplayably polluted.