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The New Nonprofit IPO As sung to Mack the Knife

Three Penny Opera on Tour with Stops at Stanford, Brown, Harvard - The Nonprofit IPO .  

A Poor Man's Retirement Plan

Given that most Americans have less than $75,000 as they approach retirement, with a life expectancy of 20-30 years and Social Security under seige, others may want to adopt my retirement plan: drink all day, if you have funds to buy alcohol, eat only high fat foods, it you have the funds for any food, and avoid exercise, under all circumstances, regardless. The doctor says it will kill me, and is increasingly specific as to when. I cannot work until retirement, but I can work until death, begging in this freezing weather, naked.

The Model Prisoner

I have a civic friend who has hung suspended in Wealth Bondage in a hierarchy of iron cages for his entire career, rising a little over time. He is now about half way up, with three cages dangling from his, and several from each of those three, down to the ones who dangle from a rope. His in turns hangs from a slightly larger cage, on up to Mistress Candidia, CEO of Wealth Bondage, in whose service is Perfect Freedom. She gets an open office on the penthouse suite, with a glass floor so she can keep an eye on progress against plan. My civic friend and I are out of touch, since his rank is so much higher than mine, but today a little slip of paper wafted down with a note from him "To Those it May Concern." One one side it said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." On the back it said, "Reform Wealth Bondage from within." I find that if I hold my breath and keep a positive thought, it transforms me, and the whole wall of cubicles begins to shimmer and sway as if unreal. It stays that way until I get some oxygen again. It is all about controlling your breathing.

Relieving the Suffering of the 85 Wealthiest in the World

Had a terrible dream last night stimulated by a case study about a mega-wealthy family that devored itself over four generatins, and an article I had read about Carthage.

The leading Carthaginian families would bargain with the gods for favors.  They pledged their own child as sacrifice, if the gods made good.

At the place of sacrifice stood Chronos, a statue with arms outstretched palms up, and leaning forward so the arms sloped downward, over a sunken fire pit. The child was placed on the outstretched arms and rolled into the pit. Ashes and bones of the child and a sacrificial animal were buried together in a pot in a special graveyard, tophet.

Leading families may even now sacrifice the children on the altar of success; while advisors fan the flames with a bellows. To relieve human suffering - why not start at the top with the 85 who own half the world's wealth? If we do relieve their suffering, perhaps they might assuage our own. That is my hope. But first I have to borrow a pair of pants.  If I can help the the 85 who own half the world's wealth get the other half there may be a bottle of wine it it for me, or even a case.  But without the pants, I will never get past the butler.

Motto upgrade

My current slogan is Wealth Bondage Rebooted to Do The Most Good. I like it because is it accurate and specific and links Gifthub to Major Foundations, the world of Stanford Social Innovation Review, my generous patron, Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage, and others who are making good.  Actually that is not a bad motto either: Wealth Bondage: Making Good. Or maybe Good Money. Wealth Bondage: Making Good Money. But I am not sure the good part of good money comes across as idealistic enough. How about Wealth Bondage: Making Real Good Money? No, same problem. How about Wealth Bondage: Making Good Money Real. No, sounds fake. I may have to stick with Wealth Bondage: Money 4 Good, but I am afraid that might infringe copyright. Wealth Bondage: Markets 4 Good? Same problem. All the funny/punny, self congratulatory crass but good ones are taken. Does anyone have any suggestions? Wealth Bondage: Doing Real Good. Doing Good Really. Markets for Real Good. Real Good Markets for Real Good.  I can't make any of them sound naive enough to be credible.

Toasting the Moon with the Blood of Christ

I had not seen him in over forty years, a friend from my stairwell at Balliol. I was unsuccessfully caging spare change outside the Nexus Global Youth Summit at the UN, when I saw my former friend entering.  He apparently is now the President of a small country whose name I forget, there to talk about selling rain water as a social venture to raise the bottom billion and make a killing too, now that the rhinos are extinct. It is a poor dry country,  somewhere among the former British colonies, known for the ivory trade, back in the day, when an earlier group of merchant-venturers brought civilization and profits to the dark continent. Seeing me naked and insane, my remaining hair matted with mud, he exclaimed, "My dear fellow, what happened to you! Have you been sent down, rusticated?" I told him, no Your Excellency,"deported from Paradise."He said, "Well, pip pip and all that," and saluted me with his Excellency hat, like Napoleon's, only with more ermine and a scarlet inner lining, apparently silk.

I have so many younger friends now, through blogging philanthropy, who write me off the record to say that they had lunch with an old college chum who is now at 45 making $3 mil a year in law, or business, or money management. I can hear in my friend's voices the old fear I had - what if outside this closed world of half deserved half lucky privilege, among the strivers and the scamsters, I am just another broken person, another upstart too clever by half, another loser? If I mention "wage theft," or unions, or minimum wage laws, the line goes cold. These are creatures not us. They are what we as preps on the upward path once called "wumps," or "townies," the hired hands who feed us in the food lines, change our beds, or stare at us enviously in the street. The Scouts changing our light bulbs, the Porters at the Gate. The breed apart as we called them once. We are creating or recreating the ranks and dominions of Imperial Britain, let's say, but without the class in social class.  We call it meritocracy, but those on the inside know that on merits, if they fall there is no going back. We even say our business is Dynastic Wealth Planning. Are we this bright and this dense? I say we advisedly as I am addressing at the moment what appears to be a snow covered cardboard box, though I believe it is the domicile of another friend of mine, a doctorate in Theology, an Episcopal minister, who could not stay off the Communion Wine, the blood of Christ as he still calls it, toasting the moon.  Perhaps he might share a drop.

Philanthropic Client of Swiss Bank Avoids Jail for Tax Evasion

Dozens of Warner's acquaintances wrote to the court describing his philanthropic activities and asking for leniency.  From The Society of Trusts and Estate Practitioners.

Bulgari as Mirror of our Nature

Passing Bulgari's plate glass window today I saw hovering among the jewels a man so sad, so broken, that even I would not give him the time of day, much less a dime. Peering more closely, yes, it was me. So like Horace's art, today's shop windows mirror our nature. And it is so hard to see ourselves in them. You have to stand just right. In imagination, I am inside, a shadow buying extraordinary jewels for Sukey Tawdry, my true love. Dead these many years. A phantom shopping for a phantom.

Real versus Sham Morals Tutorials for America's Wealthiest Families

Unnerved by the video of Keith Whitaker on wealth and wisdom  consulting, I asked my mentor, The Happy Tutor, Dungeon Master to the Stars in Wealth Bondage, if the morals tutorials he trained me to give to our best clients OTK are the real thing or just a sham? He began laughing violently. "Ask me again," he said. "You are seriously asking if we are a sham? Is the Pope Catholic, Phil? Keith is the real deal. The others on his site (Wise Counsel), all those doctorates are real. Do think you in any way resemble Keith or Drs A-Zed?" "But Tutor, I said, "doesn't our doing sham morals consulting in Wealth Bondage, tend to bring our noble trade into disrepute?" Again, came the terrible laughter.  I am beginning to think I would have done better to study under real scholars like Dr. Paul Schervish at Boston College, or reputable moral and political philosophers like Leo Strass at University of Chicago. I have devoted my life to being sincere, authentic and a tireless teller of truth to power. I have given up a home, money, any hope of marriage or children, I sleep naked in the street like Diogenes, I have done years in and out of the Insane Asylum for Morals Tutors to Great Families, I have had 85% of my brain removed, one scoop at a time, to get with the program. Now, my own mentor says that it was all just a sham right from the start? I would better have been born a dog.

Dr. Keith Whitaker riffing on Wealth and Wisdom consulting

 

 

To the extent he can give wise counsel and escape a whipping he is a wiser man than I. That, too,is practical wisdom. I panic listening to the video. If this is what wisdom and virtue sound like, in counseling America's wealthiest families, what does that make me? A world class fool, at best, a sorry excuse for a fool at worst. My friends tell me that Wealth Bondage should be a musical. Maybe I can get Keith to coauthor the libretto or score the songs. But if he is getting paid for wisdom already, he may not have an incentive to create a work of art, holding the mirror up to nature as Horace did in the Court of Caesar Augustus, or as Brecht did in the Weimar Republic. One thing about mirrors is that I never look in one. To see what I have become creeps me out. How did I come to this? How did I who in my youth once loved literature, philosophy, and theory as the highest form of fun become so gaunt and disconsolate? Was it my selling these moral consulting services to wealthy people, to make a living? Did I prostitute wisdom for filthy lucre and access to the mighty? Hell no! I can't even give wisdom away. And the closest I ever got to power was the time I fell asleep drunk in the street and was run over by Mayor Bloomberg's motorcade. I think it was the bum wine and losing my teeth, and maybe the endless lobotomies, that have made me look so antique. I could figure now in a moral fable: "Consider, poor Phil, this walking ruin, naked before you, trembling with cold and the effects of alcoholism, his eyes shifty and red, ashamed even to look at you! Beware! Here is what happens to those who fail to put higher education to good account. Be wise, like the good counselor, the wise and trusted advisor to wealthy families, Keith! Be like Keith!" And then Keith could walk on looking sharp. I am good with it, if I get to sleep indoors while the gig lasts.