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July 28, 2020 - 10:43am
Our strange political moment has a new saint. Forget Portland Athena: the daughter of the president of ExxonMobil Chemical has embraced socialism, and is now giving away her parents’ money.
In one mesmerising thread, she first declares her membership of the super-rich, lists the moral failings of her fellow rich students, inveighs against the moral depravity of wealth and privilege, re-affirms her commitment to ‘unlearning all the elitist shit my brain normalised’ and calls on her ‘fellow rich kids’ to stop pretending they aren’t rich.
The internet responded by sending her Venmo (electronic payment) details: requests for money to help with rent, top surgery fundraisers, or just ‘reparations’. She appears to have sent cash to many of these, before calling again on ‘fellow rich kids’ to ‘do your part’.
Her parents should congratulate her. She’s putting into practice every lesson it’s possible to learn today at an elite American college about how to succeed at the pinnacle of America’s new class structure.
It’s unlikely that she’d be as generous with the contents of her bank balance if she’d earned it herself waiting tables. But to make this observation is to miss the point: the capacity to give away her entire bank balance to strangers, via Venmo, in the name of renouncing ‘privilege’ is today a quintessential marker of that privilege.
It’s not enough, today, simply to have privilege: to be truly at the top of the pile, you have to have so much of the stuff that you can spray it around in total confidence that whatever happens, you’re still never going to starve.
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SubscribeGiving away money you can afford to give away is impressive, but not that impressive. Now, if she got a job in a care home while living in a trailer park …
Giving away money you can afford to give away is…. Uninteresting??
Matthew 6:2:
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”
The rich have always vacillated between ostentatious displays of wealth and ostentatious displays of charity and austerity, just look at the history of Christianity. It just depends which set of values is currently in fashion.
The instinct is there, although isn’t it a Western phenomenon? Do other cultures do the same thing? Christianity has encouraged this mindset, but has been aware of the conflict between principles and reality. The ideal was complete poverty where the rich young man really does empty his bank account.
Yes islam expects the rich to pay over a percentage of their wealth. Not just of their income.
Really?
It seems to be the same thing to me.
Ostentatious displays of charity ARE ostentatious displays of wealth
Although St Francis genuinely embraced holy poverty, not sure if she is
Moral: Never have children.
One day, walking down the lane with 2 hens under his arms a working class member of the communist party was asked whether he would give away one of his golden carriages if he had 2.
Of course he said, I am a party member.
Then he was asked if he would give away one of his oxen if he had 2.
Of course, I am a party member.
Then he was asked if he would give away one of the hens under his arms
Are you crazy? This is all I have!
People are always willing to give away what they don’t have. Or, in this inverted case- give away what they can afford to without it really affecting them.
This is just a charge unless she ends up actually poor or middle class. That said it’s nicer than screwing people like most of the Rentier class.
It’s not new either, throwing money at the poor was something aristocratic Romans and feudalists have done to curry favour or praise.
Bet she hangs onto ‘just enough’
to carry on being filthy rich
Meaningless. Just sending some money to this person and that person will make no difference in the short- or long-run. What might make a difference is doing something about the bribery etc in terms of getting into this college or that NY condo. But even then, the inequalities and distortions are of a much deeper and larger nature, and relate to the way in which money is created and the people for whom it is created, globalisation, the internet, the corruption of democracy and every US institution.
There is a part of me, probably quite wrongly, that just wants the rich to be like the used to be. But then I realise I am not wrong, because they are just the same. Its just the fashion they follow thats thats changed
So uh how do I get a Venmo account?😀
My daughter told me some years ago when she was at Oxford that she’d met kids there who had so much money they didn’t know what to do with it; so they spent it on cocaine etc and became drug addicts. Ms Exxon’s method is at least less self-destructive. Don’t suppose Ma and Pa Exxon are too impressed though.
It’s highly doubtful that this daughter has *that* kind of money at her disposal.
While the head of ExxonMobil’s chemical unit is no doubt well-compensated, it’s not a “billionaire, generations of wealth” sort of position. This person isn’t listed as one of the top handful of highly compensated executives in ExxonMobil’s proxy statement, but it’s quite easy to find her bio – https://corporate.exxonmobi… . Quick summary is a career Exxon employee who moved up the ladder and into that particular job last year.
And what is the outcome of paying into ‘top surgery fundraisers’? Enabling identity-entranced teenage girls and young women to wokely amputate their healthy breasts.
How progressive. Rather like helping anorexics starve?
She should listen to the growing ranks of detransitioned females speaking out about benignly marketed ‘top surgery’, ‘bottom surgery’, ‘medical transition’.
The problem with poverty through charity is that you’re then dependent on the help of others unless you can make more money. Welfare is a source of shame for many that need it.
Going from self-reliance (however unearned) to both poverty and societal shame is quite a sacrifice. I doubt that many have ever achieved that.
What on earth is wrong with these people?
She did not even send any money. After that declaration, she deleted her account
Perhaps her parents cut her off.
She ended her linked thread with “You’re rich. Stop lying”. Would be very funny if her parents essentially told her, “No, we’re rich from years of work. We’ve supported you up to this point, now get a job if you want money to give away.”
I’m no apologist for woke, but on the face of it this seems quite admirable. Like St Francis. Or am I missing something?
I tended to be more with St Augustine on this one. Those living in chosen poverty often require the wealth of wider society to support them, so in a sense are dependant on the very society they seek to condemn. It’s not a project that can be universalised and has always caused problems when this has been attempted.
It either it can only be practiced authentically by a very small number of individuals or inauthentically, giving away a small portion of wealth but in a very public way, by those who are looking to buy social capital.
I suspect this case may be the latter.
I suspect you’re right