Super Powerful People
Inequality’s exponential growth has created a small number of individuals whose power enables them to think in ways the rest of us cannot.
Faced with ‘the world’s problems',’ Jeff Bezos can contemplate multi-billion dollar space colony schemes playing out over decades. Elon Musk can ‘coup’ whoever he wants.
And Jack Dorsey can ban the President of the United States from Twitter, a private platform.
People don’t usually say it this way, but in the US we’re essentially hoping that the same smart tech guys who have kept us digitally anxious and distracted for the past twenty years will solve our problems like they always do in the best movies. Special sunglasses for the earth, or something like that.
In China, where Trump has surprising popularity still among some people, the Twitter ban is mind blowing.
I’m sure I’m not the only one to point out the Tale of the Two Jacks now on-going, in which one de-platforms an elected official once referred to as, ‘the Leader of the Free World,’ and the other knuckles under to State Power and hasn’t been heard of for months, de facto de-platformed.
I am speaking of course about the Jacks Dorsey and Ma, super powered individuals by any standard.
Ma is the richest man in China. Alibaba, the company that he founded in 1999, controls 80% of the ecommerce in China. Controlling 80% of anything anywhere is an accomplishment. Controlling 80% of the ecommerce in China is mind boggling.
In recent years he has stepped away from daily management to focus on philanthropy. In March and April, 2020, he was the beneficent face of China, taking a global perspective in sending supplies everywhere in the world pandemic relief was needed.
By October, he was poised to lead the world’s largest IPO, estimated in the $200 billion range, for the Ant Group, once the financial subsidiary of Alibaba and now a FinTech powerhouse in its own right.
Then he spoke to the annual Bund Summit in Shanghai, an international financial conference, and complained. He complained that international lending rules do not favor developing nations like China. But most of crucially he complained about China’s own banking system as operating on ‘a pawnshop mentality,’ by which he meant it focused too much, according to him, on collateral and too little on upside potential, ie, risk.
Within days The Ant IPO was suspended and Jack Ma has hardly been heard from since. As he has never been the silent type, his silence is loud.
These must be the extremes.
Who’s the Jack who resisted the established system like Jack Ma and acted against racism and violent divisiveness like Jack Dorsey?
According to one fame ranker, the Most Famous Person named Jack is: Jackie Robinson!
He definitely meets the criteria — he revolutionized established systems and took direct action against white supremacy every time he stepped on a baseball field, potentially 154 games per year, 1947-1956.
He wasn’t calm in the face of abuse and injustice, as is sometimes claimed - he was simply capable of controlling his reactions and saving his anger and aggression for the context in which it would be grudgingly rewarded.
Super Powered People are not going to save us. Jeff Bezos’ relatively unsophisticated sci-fi solutions might work for Amazon but almost certainly not for the whole world. His super power is relentless ambition.
Jack Dorsey is fascinating but I wouldn’t bet the planet’s future on him and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t either.
If we sit back and rely on tech billionaires, we will be exactly what economists’ equations say we are — consuming units of limited scope who can be objectified, manipulated, and predicted.
Jackie Robinson can inspire us to be passionate and powerful individuals who know we don’t own the world, but also know how to stay true to ourselves and express our truths in a way that can change things at scale when we do it together
It looks to me that there is only room for one Super Person in China.
I am a China-phile. I have traveled extensively and lived there for months at a time. I have never felt more alive than my days in China. The energy field there is palpable.
I have stayed up too late drinking rice wine and bullshitting with Chinese professors who were also bombed. They were also censoring themselves, even when bombed. They’d lose their relatively easy gig in a heartbeat if they expressed unauthorized truths.
Even Jack Ma.
China has ridden strong powerful leaders in the BAT companies — Baidu, Alibaba, and Ten Cent — and others, to become new Kings of the Mountain. Thanks for your service. Now remember this:
出 林 笋子 先 打断
The bamboo shoots which grow outside the edge of the grove
will be the first to be broken off.
There have been larger than life people throughout history, some commanding and controlling, some inspiring and influencing by their example.
We need people to grow outside the edge of the grove. We need them to tell us what it’s like there and invite us make new groves. Opening our eyes and inspiring us, without diminishing us. The Jackie Robinson kind of Jack.
The whole world needs that kind of leadership now from a voice or voices that can speak to all us.
Instead of waiting for it, I’m acting like I hear it right now, pushing me to build new worlds with new social relations at any scale I can.
I also write on Medium, mostly about Virtual Reality