Nancy Walton Laurie got some bad news on Sunday. She was the target of vandals with a message of hate directed directly at her.
Luckily for this particular Nancy Walton, she is a “Walton-Walton,” as in the daughter of one of the Walton brothers that built up Walmart. Through her hard work and brilliant creativity while in-utero, she is now worth $8 billion.
Her super yacht was vandalized by people using fire extinguishers.
Now that is going to really upset her because, as you’re well aware, the Waltons are famously cheap when it comes to spending money on anything other than pampering themselves.
And they don’t care what you think of them anyway.
You might have noticed that neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffet are heroes, but their wealth is all going to a trust and NOT to build a dynastic family that ensures their great, great, great, grandchildren never need a job.
To truly appreciate how much wealth this woman is hoarding — because she’s not trying to build anything, as far as I know — if she lived off the interest of her interest of her interest, she would still live on $8 million a year, assuming a 10% annual gain.
She would probably react with abject horror if someone told her she needed to live on $8 million a year when most of us would throw the biggest party on earth if we lived on the interest of $8 million.
Forbes says that the Walton family collectively donated 1.3% of the wealth to philanthropy over four years.
These people are in the running for the most awful people on earth, and it’s hard to write that without sounding like we endorse vandalism. We don’t.
One could do FAR more damage to the Walton family collectively by organizing a small, $250K foundation that spent money on ads shaming all of them for that 1.3% — their vanity might cause them to double it.
It would still be shameless — but think of the money raised.
Better than vandalism.
Last thing before we get to this monstrous yacht. Consider the amount of good she could do by donating $7 billion to nothing but college scholarships or treatment for addiction. It would change tens of thousands of lives and she’d be left with a billion fcking dollars!
We are going to be seeing more and more of this when we’d prefer to see the entire Walton workforce go on strike demanding a $25.00 minimum wage (think of the lives improved) and ads in papers shaming various people.
The yacht, the damned yacht: The “essentials”:
Total cost of the yacht: $300 million (Imagine the good… )
Rooms for 31 guests. (If you can’t show it off, why have it?)
And: An on-board aquarium, full spa facilities, and a large cinema. There’s even a separate gym for the ship’s crew and a small hospital for at-sea medical crises.
According to The Daily Beast’s report:
“Two demonstrators —from the Spain-based Futuro Vegetal environmental group — then displayed a sign that read “You Consume Others Suffer,” which they proudly posted to their Twitter account.”
And it’s only going to get worse.
Wait until A.I. takes your job. (And, I’ll be the first to go, though I dare ChatGPT to come up with some of the quips and wordplay…it’ll do it eventually.)
Jobs lost: There will be no truckers, pilots, very few physicians (very few), military members, accountants, teachers…
And all that money saved will be going to a Jeff Bezos or a Walton or worse, a Zuckerberg.
Without a Universal Basic Income (which requires a 90% tax on “Bezos type” wealth, and he better f@#king not complain because that leaves his first “interest”), society will break down without it.
Eating the rich will become an option for some.
If human beings manage to not kill themselves and go extinct prior to it happening, the next step in human evolution will be to upload a mind — a real mind — into a cyborg robot, and there will be no need for money because there will be no scarcity of anything.
That is not regrettable evolution. It could be hugely beneficial.
Society will run with nearly 100% efficiency. Every “thing” will be created by A.I. computers, 3-D printing, and lots of advantages. It’s very possible that they could do us proud if ethics and morals were built in to mitigate some of the worst human traits.
If you think it is far away, imagine the pace at which we’re moving.
I graduated high school in 1988. That was only 35 years ago!
Who – back then, looked at the phone on the wall and thought, “Someday, I’ll hold that in my hand and watch people have sex on that thing.” (Not that I do, of course… but you do! J/K)
Write THAT, Chat! (It will).
Right now, you hold in your hand access to nearly all the knowledge ever accrued on Earth. You don’t understand 99.9% of it. But you have access to it.
Now imagine a mind that does understand it.
It’s coming.
Oh, and the yacht? Cyborgs won’t need a tanning deck, but the intellectual curiosity in cruising the world’s oceans might be worth it.
They would be conscious and have a human mind. They might find Antarctica fascinating and beautiful while walking around naked.
Anyway, the ability to cruise down there is worth $300 million right now…or, if you’re Nancy, about 7% of one person’s total wealth.
This column is based on original reporting by Erik Uebelacker of The Daily Beast.
I can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and on Twitter @JasonMiciak
Editor’s Note: This is an opinion piece reflecting the opinion of the author alone
