The Decline of Noblesse Oblige

 www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/29/2289327/-The-Decline-of-Noblesse-Oblige

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Noblesse oblige is “the obligation of anyone who is in a better position than others—due, for example, to high office or celebrity—to act respectably and responsibly.” The term itself seems to have arisen in the 1830’s, though the idea dates back to the Greeks. A paradigmatic example is John Jacob Astor IV, the richest passenger on the Titanic; he refused to get into a lifeboat until all the women and children had places, and ended up going down with the ship.

Now consider the robber barons of the Gilded Age — the late nineteenth century US.

It was a period where greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth and opulence at the expense of the working class. In fact, it was wealthy tycoons, not politicians, who inconspicuously held the most political power during the Gilded Age.

It was an age of exploitation of basically everyone who wasn’t wealthy or connected, it was an age of high and low corruption, an age of excess, and to some extent it ended with the Panic of 1893 (“one of the most severe financial crises in the history of the United States”) — though it could be argued that traces of the era and its attitudes lasted until the Great Depression that started after 1929.

(Personal side note: My great-grandfather was badly injured in a railroad accident around 1900 because the rail companies had calculated it was cheaper to pay death and injury benefits (when they couldn’t get out of them) than to spend money on safety — “Accidents Were ‘Cheap’”.)

In spite of all that, there was an understanding among those exploiters that they did have certain obligations to use their wealth for common benefit — with a side benefit for themselves in boosting their self-image. One example is Carnegie Mellon University, a major academic institution founded by Andrew Carnegie, one of the era’s richest men, which in 1967 merged with the Mellon Institute, started and supported by another titan of the Gilded Age, Andrew Mellon. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the greatest (to my mind, the greatest, but then I grew up there) museums in the world thanks largely to donations and bequests by wealthy patrons.

Compare that to Trump University, a for-profit scam which eventually cost Trump $25 million in a settlement with its defrauded students. And that was just one of his fake charities and similar ripoffs.

Then there is Elon Musk, currently the richest man in the world. He has his own “charity” — but: Elon Musk Has a Giant Charity. Its Money Stays Close to Home. (March 11, 2024)

Mr. Musk’s philanthropy has been haphazard and largely self-serving — making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses. . . .

“The really striking thing about Musk is the disjuncture between his outsized public persona, and his very, very minimal philanthropic presence,” said Benjamin Soskis, who studies philanthropy at the Urban Institute. Where other billionaires have aimed for a broad impact on society, Mr. Soskis said Mr. Musk’s foundation lacks “any direction or any real focus, outside his business ventures.”

No wonder Musk and Trump are thick as thieves — for now, anyway.

I’ve been mulling over this topic for a while, but what brought it to the forefront today was this CNN story: Elon Musk’s X is stepping in to the legal fight over Alex Jones’ Infowars. Experts say it’s unprecedented. The thrust of the article is about how Musk is using his legal team to challenge the forced sale of Jones’s media empire, but the concluding paragraphs are enlightening in a different way:

By intervening in the case, X is further showing how the platform is ultimately Musk’s domain, where he can do as he pleases. . . .

“What conceivable motivation does a company have for destroying the value in their users’ accounts, and implicitly threatening all other users?” [Toby] Butterfield[, who teaches social media law at Columbia University’s Law School,] said. “It becomes an individual person’s playground, rather than a functioning marketplace of ideas.” [emphasis added]

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which was an open platform for the free exchange of ideas, has become a playground for the richest man in the world (except maybe for Putin, whose vast wealth is a Russian state secret).

This, in a nutshell, exemplifies one of the major issues confronting the world: the growth of extraordinary power without any sense of responsibility attached — the absence of noblesse oblige, as it were. It’s not totally dead, by any means. Bill Gates has given over $50 billion to charitable causes over career, and George Soros just gave almost 80 percent of his wealth to his charity in 2017 (and it is noteworthy that Soros is routinely attacked by the far right). Contrast that with Trump’s infamous response to the Covid pandemic in March 2020: ‘I don’t take responsibility at all'.

One of the eternal questions historians like to play with is whether the person makes the times or the times makes the person. In this instance, at least, I suggest it’s a combination of both. The country has been heading in the direction of irresponsible wealth and power for decades, certainly ever since Reagan and the 1980’s claim that “greed is good” (a slight misquote in the movie, but the sentiment was accurate). Trump’s seizing of the moment was unexpected and unwelcomed by the real powers-that-be, but he managed to bully them into putting up with him. He also, by his outrageous example and conman skills, magnified and legitimated the blatant rejection of responsibility.

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” The Gilded Age was a tragedy; the Trump age is a farce (and yes, a tragedy as well, but so are most farces).