The Cost of Embracing Avarice.

The CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, was recently let go. All over the media was the fact that he’d spent $1.22M redecorating his office at a time when his company was losing billions of dollars. As I tried my best to figure out how in the world he could spend that much money on an office, the answer quickly presented itself:

1) $2,700 for six wall sconces.
2) $5,000 for a mirror in his private dining room.
3) $11,000 for fabric for a "Roman Shade.”
4) $13,000 for a chandelier in the private dining room.
5) $15,000 for a sofa.
6) $16,000 for a "custom coffee table.”
7) $18,000 for a “George IV Desk.”
8) $25,000 for a "mahogany pedestal table.”
9) $28,000 for four pairs of curtains.
10) $35,000 for something called a "commode on legs.”
11) $37,000 for six chairs in his private dining room.
12) $68,000 for a "19th Century Credenza" in his office.
13) $87,000 for a pair of guest chairs.
14) $87,000 for an area rug in Thain's conference room and another area rug for $44,000.
15) $230,000 to his driver for one year’s work.
16) $800,000 to hire celebrity designer Michael Smith, who is currently redesigning the White House for the Obama family for just $100,000.

Add to this list a $1,400 wastepaper basket.

Lots of people are outraged by this, but I have a feeling that the outrage isn’t aimed in the right direction. Most people express outrage at Thain’s having spent $1.22M “in this time of crisis.” The implication by that statement is simply that if it were another time, it would be okay. I think it’s fair to say that most people probably do believe that.

I don’t.

What struck me as the great evil that everyone is missing is the very fact that there exists in this world a $1,400 wastepaper basket. That alone is sign of the unrestrained avarice of our society. We have become a society of greedy little pigs.

It’s not so much that all of us are such greedy little pigs, but that we, as a society, value, envy, promote, praise and encourage those that are.

I’m not against a person becoming wealthy. I hope to be very wealthy one day. But what I am against is a person doing whatever he or she pleases with that wealth without any sense of obligation to society as a whole. It seems that our whole nation is so concerned about the individual right to wealth that we don’t think at all about the responsibility of wealth.

Think back to Monopoly. I remember playing this game as a teen. In one game, I remember becoming very lucky with my rolls. I landed on none of the other players’ properties—except undeveloped ones. They, however, landed on all my most developed properties. The result was that I soon owned the whole board. In fact, there was no more money left in the bank. I owned it all. Even as a young teen I understood a simple fact—if I didn’t share my wealth, my fun was going to end. There is a point in Monopoly where you win. It’s when you own everything. The only rational solution is to declare the winner and either put the game away or start a new one. How could it possibly be that they would continue to play going deeper and deeper in debt to me on each turn—even as I continue to build more homes and hotels? What is the point of their playing if they have no chance to win? And that’s the point of this blog.

Our nation is economically unstable. This crisis is showing every single day that it is far deeper than we were told or could ever have imagined. It’s highly likely that all this money put into banks isn’t going to make one ounce of difference. Why? Because the underlying attitude of those who manage the system is fundamentally flawed. As long as it is okay to view our lives like a game of Monopoly, we are destined to end our economy at some point. As long as the “haves” feel they have the right to keep gains they only received because they manipulated, out lobbied, and deceived millions of people and the government, there is no way to move forward.

Another good metaphor might be the Titanic. The rich were allowed into rescue boats on the Titanic. Some of those boats left not even being filled to capacity because crewmen (those in charge) so desired to protect the lifestyle to which the rich were accustomed that they completely ignored the needs of the ship. That’s what this economic situation looks like to me today. The only difference is this—imagine if there were no rescue ships coming for those in the lifeboats. It would only be a matter of days before they’d die or freeze to death in the middle of the ocean. Their fate would have ultimately been no better than the rest of the passengers and crew. It just would have come a few days later. But in the meantime, everyone else dies.

The problem is the failure to realize we’re all in the same boat. Whether you call that boat the United States or the planet Earth, we’re still intimately dependent on each other for survival. If we see the world that way, perhaps the idea of someone demonstrating to us how greed-filled and arrogant they are—how much bling they have, how much cash they’ve amassed, how much they waste on selfish, pointless, trivial bobbles or lavish on monuments of self-aggrandizement in the form of pricey homes or jets or yachts or cars—wouldn’t be a cause for envy, but rather for rebuke and ostracism.

I wonder what the world would look like if there were no $100,000 cars simply because no car is worth $100,000 and no one would buy it because doing so would be a sign of massive financial and social irresponsibility instead of financial greatness. What if rappers sang about how much they gave? What if, instead of Fergie singing “Glamorous,” she sang “Generous?” What if there were no such thing as a $35,000 toilet or a $1,400 wastepaper basket simply because we all understood that somewhere in the world there is a child dying of hunger or disease or neglect, and that that child really is our little sister?

What if we all just woke up tomorrow and said, let’s end this game and start a new one with different rules that are fairer for all the players? What would happen? Those who are winning—those who think they are winning anyway—the ones on the lifeboats-- would say nay! They would fight to the death to preserve what they believe is their advantage, their right—even if it is just an illusion or temporary—even if it was gained through deception. They would argue that those who want to start over are the losers and that it’s “unfair” to winners to have to start over. That "starting over" would forever damage the nation--despite the impossibility of ever repaying a twelve trillion dollar national debt--of ever balancing budgets under these conditions. But somehow it’s not unfair to have everyone pay for this bailout so that the winners can keep their corporate jets and their illusions of success.

Avarice. It is one of the deadly sins that we’ve embraced. And sure enough, it is killing us.

--T.R. Locke
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