We’ve all been casually following the drama at Hewlett Packard. Seems the Chairwoman of the board of directors hired private investigators to find out whether a director of the company was leaking information about Carly Fiorina’s departure from the company. The methods were/are suspect. Fine. A director of the company, Thomas Perkins of Kleiner Perkins fame, resigned from the board of Hewlett Packard outraged over the methods used. Also fine. Good for Mr. Perkins. But in the coverage (page 4, the editor’s note) of the incident it comes to light that Mr. Perkins just completed a $100 million superyacht. I think that’s interesting.
Yeah, my inner Marx is acting up. Or maybe my inner Chesterton, more like it. Some will say Mr. Perkins is getting his well deserved due. His curriculum vitae is certainly impressive. But is any proxy-penis really worth $100 million. Really? Pereunt et imputantur, my friends. We act and the acts are accounted to us.
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You’re just jealous.
Ha. So very jealous.
That is quite an impressive piece of kit, though.
Not jealous. I’m prone to get sea-sick. Really.
OK, sour grapes then.
Joel, I think your old site and its scripture verse has the answer: “Suffer me that I may speak; and after that I have spoken, mock on.” (Job 21:3)
But if we’re going to quote scripture, I prefer this: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:25)
wow! where did that come from??
Did I bring scripture into this without realizing it?? “we’re going to quote scripture” etc.?
I guess I propbably don’t understand exactly what you mean by that verse either. Are you saying it is a sin to be wealthy? I’d be genuinely interested in your views on that.
btw, my current site still has that verse. nice investigative work.
Well, if a man spends $100million on a boat, that’s a statement of what is important to that man. If you go back to my post, I quote a little latin aphorism which I think is a valuable guard-rail in life: Pereunt et imputantur. (That translates to: “We act and the acts or accounted to us.”) A man can choose to spend his money on a yatch, or on something else. Maybe the relief of the suffering of innocents. This isn’t the forum for a discussion of which is better. But, as I said: our acts are accounted to him.
Ya know, I’ve come to a view of the world that says if someone knows how to make $100 million, it is probably moral and just for him/her to do so. It is moral and just for each of us to do what we do best.
BUT being, as we are, civilised, I think it is also incumbent on that person to do a little for those people who cannot do it for themselves.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but there happened to be an interesting article in the WSJ today in which this particular yacht plays a prominent part. I scanned it into a PDF here(2.6mb). The article demonstrates perfectly my misgivings about the kind of perspective that sees a man buying a $100mil yacht and feels only a vague condemnation of the man for his imagined priorities. Read it and maybe you’ll see how, just perhaps, buying that yacht might be right up there among the best things he could have done with that money by any standard including the altruistic. Don’t let your inner marxist cheat you out of the depth of the story happening around you.
I think the super yacht must be the IT executive billionaire’s version of a weekend Harley. There was just an article in Fortune about Sun co-founder Bill Joy’s new super-yacht.