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Affluence.org To Make Life Better, indeed

Affluence.org, the exclusive organization of the world's wealthiest people:

Membership to Affluence.org is completely free but requires a demonstratable minimum household net worth of $3 million US; or a minimum annual household income of $300,000; or successful invitation of 5 other people that qualify for membership. Apply today for free.

Make life Better
Interact with other affluent people from around the world
Receive free access to a dedicated Affluence Concierge
Attend the most exclusive parties and events in the world
Receive priority access to the world's most exclusive nightclubs, hotels, and restaurants
Find other millionaires, billionaires, and socially elite people to network with.

I did not make the net worth and income requirements, but I am allowed a free trial membership, and a free run of those elite bacchanalian revels,  as the Exclusive Morals Tutors to America's Wealthiest Singles and Families of all Races, Classes, and Genders. The Affluence Concierge provides priority access to me whenever the Wealth Holder or his or her date, or child, has lost his or her moral sanity, never had any, or is in need of a morals makeover. For upgrades in good sense and good taste, I always recommend the free-range Comp Lit Tutor, Tom Matrullo, for whom The Great Gatsby, Paradise Lost, The Romance of the Rose, or The Divine Comedy are all light work. So many are working to pander to, or corrupt, or exploit these millionaires, billionaires, and socially elite, status and luxury besotted people. It is only fair that Tom and I redeem them, as best we can, one lost soul at a time.  We might have done it as Morals and Literature Professors Yale, had we not partied away our years there in grad school with results that now leave us three million short of elite status. Sadder and wiser, yes, but where's the percentage in that?

Celebrity Assistants are Much in Demand

Apparently, New York based Celebrity Assistants make $60,000 to $150,000 a year. I am thinking of joining their Professional Society, to see if I can establish a beachhead for Morals Tutors to America's Most Celebrated Families. I am told, in this excellent article on "The Heart of Service," that being seen and not heard is generally a good move. Sounds a little feudal, but it pays.

Do the Wealthy Have Up to Date Plans?

Walt Zultowski in Private Wealth magazine reports that about 65% of pentamillionaires have no plan or a plan that is 5 or more years old.

Storyzon

"Excuse me, Aufidia," said the scop, strumming an agelic note on his gilded harp, "would you like some meaning with your stupendous wealth?" Storyzon will write your life story to pass on to your heirs. Not a tell all, not a satire, not necessarily a fair and balanced account, not a heartfelt confession, but "an heirloom that will keep the connection between generations alive. Because life experience is the most precious gift we can pass on." So, leave your stuff to charity, and leave your kids a Storyzon of your life. Many good life lessons, I am sure. If you want a mirror held up to nature, though, follow the Roman satirist, Horace. Martial was ok too.  (Storyzon is a Limited Liability Company, meaning that the writers, presumably, are beyond the reach of legal retribution.)

Faith, Hope, and Luxury

"Is generosity a luxury good?" This post by Sasha Dichter is so good that it drove me to hunt up his bio and his manifesto too. I had a profesor once, who said that when he was coming of age among Marxists in the 1930's his friends had a saying, "Ethics are a luxury good." I don't see in the Bible, though, where it says that.

Philanthrocapitalists - We're Back to Save the World!

Public Innovators:

Root Cause is excited to be partnering with Harvard's Center for Public Leadership to co-sponsor a lecture by Matthew Bishop, business editor for The Economist and author of the new book, "Philanthropcapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World". In an op-ed last weekin the New York Times, Bishop emphasized that the "core strategy" of many philanthrocapitalists is to leverage government spending, which already dwarfs all private charitable giving from the rich and not-so-rich combined.

I wonder if the title, "How the Rich Can Save the World," would be chosen today, if the book were just now being published. I mean, the world needs saving, capitalism is not so spiffy as it was, and it would be good if the rich stepped up. But I gather the idea is to leverage the taxpayer one more time.

Blow Me The Last Bubble

Kunstlerwonders whether amidst the corruption, and the bailouts, and the vertiginous fall in the stock market and in employment, whether the populace is questioning the legitimacy of our socio-political arrangements. We see who suffers, who gets bailed out, and it sickens us. A meritocracy at the top of which sit Madoff, Paulson, a supine SEC, and the tired politicos now joining Obama, seems no meritocracy at all, but a revolving clique of insiders whose collective self-aggrandizement has left us destitute as a nation. The real existing "Free Market" turned out to be a scam. Socializing our problems with money we borrow from China might help, until the currency collapses, but even now, on the horizon Kunstler senses anarchic unrest. American Greatness patrolled by Blackwater and the US Army now deployed on US soil.  

Some of us recall Kent State. When the combat  traumatized  soldiers  deployed from Iraq open fire on Code Pink or whomever, the game changes. That the President in now empowered to declare Martial Law and put troops into the streets to quell unrest shows how well anticipated was the meltdown. You would have thought that instead of planning for armed suppression of dissent these politicians might have cleaned up their own act.

Permaculture in Lewisburg, West Virginia

"Entropy Pawsed is a nature-linked low energy living demonstration site in a rural remote valley of the Yew Mountains, 25 miles north of beautiful historic Lewisburg, West Virginia." 

Did you Know?

"We live in exponential times," excellent Vimeo video.

Nothing Left to Sell

Charles Eisenstein, Money and the Crisis of Civilization: 

 

Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a "service". And we are the richer for it. Right?

Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.

In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray.

The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell.