How to Be Rich

I have just been on a pilgrimage to one of my favorite places in all the world, namely Boldt Castle in the Thousand Islands -- and it got me thinking about wealth, and what it can and cannot do. It is a popular pastime these days to think about “the rich” in purely political terms, and as predators and exploiters, basically -- and admittedly this is what many of them are, and do. And I suppose to a certain degree this has always been true -- people attain wealth through force of arms, political influence, family connections, and so on, and then spend the bulk of their time trying to protect it or increase it even further. In the case of our modern barons of industry -- businessmen, inventors, master marketers, and the like -- their wealth is considered, in this age of democracy, to be a bit more legitimate, a bit more “earned” (i.e. deserved) than that acquired in the old, pre-Industrial Revolution days. Whether this is actually so depends, I would say, on the specific case. If a moderately-successful businessman multiplies his fortune many times over through political influence, bribery, and a government-granted monopoly, one has a right to ask what part of it is really his and what part is the rightful possession of others -- those less aggressive, less corrupt, less influential. The pure case of a fortune made through success in the free market, with the laws of supply and demand allowed to operate without adulteration by government, is becoming increasingly difficult to find -- although it is still perfectly possible, at least in theory, to acquire great wealth simply by supplying people with the goods and services they want, need, and are willing to purchase via the free market.

Now, in the case of Mr. George Boldt, he made his fortune primarily in the hotel business, which is arguably among the least coercive of enterprises. No one absolutely has to stay in a hotel, and no one is ever forced to stay in one, or stay in any particular one -- so I think one could say that his wealth was, by and large, legitimate, i.e. not ill-gotten. But the point I’m trying to make is not so much about the “how” as about the “what” -- i.e., what one does with one’s wealth once one makes it. This is why I entitled this post “How to _Be_ Rich”, as opposed to “How to _Get_ Rich”. If I knew the latter, I’d be rich myself -- and I’d probably be a bit secretive as to the “how” (unlike all of these clowns who crank out “how to make a million” books -- on closer inspection, it seems like most of them have made their million by selling those books).

So what did Mr. Boldt do with his money? Did he turn it over to those countless charities whose mission seems primarily to “give a man a fish” rather than teaching him how to fish? Or -- worse yet -- did he turn it over to some unfathomably corrupt arm of the United Nations, the way some of our contemporary million- or billionaires are fond of doing? Well no -- he was much smarter than that, and had better taste. He built a castle -- or let’s say he _began_ building a castle, but stopped work on it when his wife died (since it was going to be a present for her). The structure, i.e. the building itself, was indeed built, and many of the furnishings had been purchased; but these were put in storage when the construction was halted. And yet the castle, and its various outbuildings -- spectacular in their own right -- remain, as a testimony to -- some would say -- ambition, grandiosity, conspicuous consumption, and folly. But I would, without necessarily arguing with those points, prefer to emphasize the positive. The castle is a monument, of this there is no doubt -- but a monument mostly to imagination, a sense of history, good taste, and -- yes -- romance.

And this gets us to the heart (no pun intended, but the castle is on Heart Island) of the matter. There is much that is being built in our time that is indeed a monument to ambition, grandiosity, conspicuous consumption, and folly. Do I have to mention the “tallest building in the world” race that is currently going on? Or Las Vegas? Or Donald Trump? But how much is being built these days that represents a healthy imagination, or a sense of history, or good taste? And as to romance… well! That motive seems a bit passe in this era of divorces that come along like clockwork, long before the wedding is paid for. There is, one could argue, a certain amount of imagination and creativity in some of what is being built now -- but much of it is of a decadent and/or deconstructionist sort. Imagination combined with a sense of history is virtually nonexistent, as is good taste in the classical sense. (A notable exception is the work of Thomas Gordon Smith.) And yet Boldt managed to accomplish all of this -- with the help of a top architectural firm and an army of skilled craftsmen (another resource that has practically disappeared at this point). (Imagine, if you will, trying to build a Chartres Cathedral now. I don’t think it could be done at any price, and in any amount of time.)

And I have to emphasize that I’m not trying to juxtapose the offenses of the “nouveau riche” with the tasteful products of “old money”. Boldt was nouveau riche, in the literal sense -- born and raised in modest circumstances in Prussia, on an island in the Baltic. But he had those things that the wealthy of our time largely seem to lack -- a baseline of his own good taste plus the intelligence to hire other people with good (or even better) taste. What we have now, in the equivalent area of operation, is an army of hacks working for philistines -- and the results are painfully obvious.

But -- you might say -- all of this is beside the point. He could have been “doing good” with his wealth rather than spending it all on “selfish” things. Well, for one thing, don’t forget that his “selfish” projects employed hundreds of people for many years -- they were the “economic stimulus act” of their day, on a slightly smaller scale. And if the castle had been completed and occupied, it would have employed at least scores of people on a full-time, permanent basis. This is “trickle-down economics” with a vengeance. The rich don’t just sit there on a pile of money like Scrooge McDuck -- they spend it on goods and services and thereby employ large numbers of people of all occupations and skill levels.

Plus, I daresay that Mr. Boldt did, indeed, donate to various charities in his time, either out of conviction or because it made for good “P.R.” But what’s the difference if it happened? And overall, he wasn’t much different from all of the other barons (robber and otherwise) of his time -- only that he managed to build the biggest, and that it has survived to this day, in which it is being restored for the viewing pleasure of the general public -- who, I daresay, enjoy wandering through its halls and over its grounds much more than they would enjoy knowing that the same amount of money had been turned over to some sketchy charity, or hapless U.N. agency, or -- even worse -- rolled into a “foundation” that seems to operate largely in secret and no one is sure whether or not its intentions are good or evil. (Not mentioning any names here… )

But there’s another point to be made. You can give a man a fish, or teach him how to fish -- but either way, all you wind up with is a man with a fish. You don’t wind up with higher civilization, or learning, or the arts, or anything else that benefits mankind (or even a small fraction thereof) in any way other than the purely material, on a subsistence level. Now, this is not to say that charity -- the corporal works in particular -- do not have their place. But what about works that raise the sights of people above “the mud below” -- above their everyday existence? These are the products of civilization (or should be) -- but they also _make_ civilization; they contribute to its growth and development, and to its noble and lasting qualities. When I see a monument to a “great” warrior, I have to ask, but what did he make? The truth is, he was a destroyer; he unmade much that was made by others. The same goes for most rulers and nearly any politician. These people are not in the “building-up” business; they are more in the slicing and dicing business. And yet what do we stand in awe of, that remains from ancient civilizations? Always the buildings and the works of art -- and, admittedly, very little else because it was either destroyed or decayed. So we judge a civilization, and a society, by works -- but actually by only a subset of works. And yet if we consider our own society, we have to admit that judging it by comparable works might result in a somewhat biased verdict -- but this is only because we have lost those things cited above -- imagination, a sense of history, good taste, and romance (the real kind, not the drooling ape-like sort that seems to satisfy most people in our time). So is a man who did his best to exemplify those virtues to be condemned? I would say he should be put in a place of high honor -- higher than any destroyer or mere ruler, higher than any manipulator of other men, and certainly higher than our present arbiters of taste, whose abominations dot the landscape and add up to a national eyesore (and a scandal as well, if we pretend to be “civilized”).