Is there anything wrong with spending gobs of money on yourself? Tom Smith

PC pioneer and Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi is apparently going to be the 5th tourist in space, a joyride that will set him back $20 million or so.  If you would like to make such a trip, you can arrange it here.

As readers of this blog know, I am not particularly prone to liberal guilt, but I really wonder about the morality of dropping $20 million so you can play astronaut.  For practically nothing, you can build a play space ship in your back yard out of old boxes and duct tape, have a space adventure, and still sleep in your own bed. 

I also understand that space exploration may have great promise, though here I also think a lot of wishful thinking tends to go on by people who think if they get up there, maybe somehow they can be as sexually active as Robert Heinlein's heros are.  But I don't think our dreams are any more likely to come true in space than they are here, however far over the rainbow it may be.  And if some entrepreneur figures out space offers some great commercial opportunity, such as GPS or satellite phones, I'm all for that too. 

What I do question is splurging so grotesquely on a fantasy adventure.  But then I wonder, who am I to talk, really?  I have splurged on family and personal adventures to an extent I could afford probably less than space tourists can afford their $20 millions.  On the other hand, if we let inconsistency stop us from pointing out the flaws in others' behavior, we would have to remain silent far more than I have any intention of being. 

So, consider all the things a space tourists could do with $20 million.  If used for charitable purposes, it would be deductible, so call it more like $30 million.  That is a lot of kids to send to college, even more to escape the gravitation of rotten public schools, and thousands of kids you could yank out of the holes they live in in Lima or Rio.  You also have to wonder, suppose you could be a space tourist, but you could not tell anybody you had done it.  It would remain a secret.  Would any of these zillionaires still do it, for $20 million?  Or would it then only be worth $5 or $1 million?  A lot of it seems to be the most infantile kind of showing off your wealth.  What my lovely wife Jeanne would call tacky, very tacky.  The whole point is to show off your wealth only in the most subtle ways, so that you preserve a kind of deniability that you are showing off.  This business of, look at me, I'm an astronaut, is of a piece with those dreadful Christmas letters, the kind, I mean, which are designed not to inspire the warm, fuzzy feelings of the season, but the bitter tang of envy, that your family is not just back from skiing at Staad, kayaking in Nepal, or catching all the latest shows in the West End.  In truth, how many of us, if due to a faulty O-ring or something, Simonyi were sucked out into space, to spend the next thousand years or so orbiting the earth, could avoid yukking it up, just a little? 

There are many expensive things I don't find morally objectionable.  Private aviation is fine because the airlines treat us like dogs, and many of one's fellow passengers deserve little better.  So that's fine.  Good food and wine is celebrated in the Bible, supports important human arts, and fights depression. I approve them.  Nice clothes, ditto, except for the Bible part.  Anyone who thinks you should not spend money on books is a philistine, notoriously unpopular in the Bible.  And of course, creating wealth through enterprise is a positive good.  Perhaps space tourism falls into this latter category, but only ambiguously so.  The space station is a pile of junk that probably diverts more from real progress in space than it contributes.  The Russians who run this operation are probably epiphenomena of that rapidly decaying nightmare empire.  It's a bit like paying $20 million to ride in a Nazi flying saucer.  Cool, but those faded SS symbols would be kinda creepy.

Don't get me wrong.  I would love to be a billionaire.  I think it would be swell.  I would get up early, log on, and just stare at all those big, constantly changing numbers in my very diversified accounts, until I got bored.  But if I were to drop $20 million on an amusement ride, I would keep it a secret.  I would not want everybody to know I was that selfish.

Comments

[gs]

From the linked article: "Simonyi, who began his career at Xerox PARC, hopes that space travel will one day become as accessible as laser printers -- which were once also rare and thought to be only for the very rich. (p)'Many of these new developments are really founded on hope,' he said." Did you read that, Tom Smith?

Your last paragraph: "Don't get me wrong. I would love to be a billionaire. I think it would be swell. I would get up early, log on, and just stare at all those big, constantly changing numbers in my very diversified accounts, until I got bored..." That's gross, and I really doubt that it's how most billionaires live, at least the self-made ones. "...But if I were to drop $20 million on an amusement ride, I would keep it a secret. I would not want everybody to know I was that selfish." The activity described in the first part of your paragraph is what I would keep secret.

[thedaddy]

How much good have Bill Gates and turd turners "Donations" done since they were announced? Have they actually transferred the funds?

We heard a huge fanfare when they announced their intentions but surprisingly little since.

thedaddy

[pacific_waters]

When did u buy into the "selfish" rich meme?

[max k]

The flaw with this sort of speculation comes with the "let's look at what he COULD do with his $20 million". At this point we're in fantasy land - the possibilities are limitless. Pick your favourite charity and dream on.

The correct question is what WOULD he do if he didn't spend it on a space trip? And the answer: it's his money, it's his business!

[tyree]

"Is there anything wrong with spending gobs of money on yourself?
The answer is, no.

[kentuckyliz]

$20 million...wow, that's almost 7 kids from Malawi!

[BlacquesJacquesShellacques]

Spending $20M this way is just plain evil and must be stopped.

Even worse, there are now 300M Americans, each and every one spending a dollar or two or three a day just the way they want, on unnecessary stuff like newspapers, and beer and internet connections and .... stuff.

The $20M for space tourism pales in comparison. We must stop this relentless pissing away of American wealth of at least, in my humble estimate, $900M each and every day.

I demand legislation. Democrats, step forward.

[Lornkanaga]

Seerak wrote:

"... catering to the idle rich is a great way to help fund continued space work. We fly cheap and safely today because the rich flew at outlandish expense...."

Precisely. I'm never going to get the flying car I was promised back in the sixties without the rich spending lots of money.

BTW, I've long believed that solar energy technology would be vastly cheaper and far more efficient if the "rich" would just start buying them by the boatload. Unfortunately, "they" don't feel they need a cheaper energy source for their personal use. Heck, if they'd just start buying them for their favorite charities the price would go down for us "poor folk" (sigh).

[sharinlite]

First time visitor via Instapundit. Good read from top to bottom. Interesting....

[TheProudDuck]

I would consider a $20 million space ride as essentially a contribution to the Russian space program, with the ride being basically the equivalent of the rubber chicken at a $1,000-a-plate fundraising dinner. The $20 million will be used (presumably) to keep the Russian space program from going the way of the Russian navy, i.e. rusting away and leaving lots of highly-trained scientists unemployed.

Think of the deficit reduction we could get if we did something like this: We wouldn't, strictly speaking, "sell" space flights, etc.; they'd be perks for donating money to the Treasury to be spent on education (for The Children) or so forth -- kind of like the coffee-table books you get for donating to PBS.

[hoya]

What a weird discussion.

Everyone who ends up, through hard work or good fortune, with a tremendous amount of money — or, shoot, any disposable income — has to ask him or herself the question 'What is most worth doing with this?' And the answer 'It's my own damned business' does not help one answer the question; it's only a reminder that the question is one's own to answer. So Tom's questions don't go away if we allow that, ultimately, Simonyi has to decide for himself.

Furthermore, even if one has legal discretion to spend one's wealth as one sees fit, that does not imply or even suggest that we should not have strong moral views about how people spend their wealth. If he spent it on a Picasso which he then tore into strips to wipe his ass, then we should recognize this as nastiness and ostracize him for his vicious wastefulness.

[Charles Simonyi]

I am very impressed by the general quality of the comments. They contain all that I would say on the subject.

I have spent several months now training hard in Star City and visited the main factories where the spacesuit and the spacecraft are developed. Super talented people work there under very modest circumstances. I am quite comfortable that they they are just as deserving of support as many of the "tax deductable" institutions I have worked with in the past and will be working with in the future. Plus, "tax deductibility" - while a tremendous concept that is unique to the US - raises its own ethical dillemas, in a way involving possibly unwitting third parties, namely the taxpayers, in one's choices of where to contribute. Nonetheless I am comfortable with that concept also.