Said Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in "Theodore Rex" by Edmund Morris (commission earned).
Context:
The flood [of political contributions] became an embarrassment for Roosevelt. Did all these men imagine they were buying him? “Corporate cunning has developed faster than the laws of nation and state,” he remarked to the reporter Lindsay Denison. “Sooner or later, unless there is a readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement.”
Born to wealth, with an inherited sense that it must be repaid with public service, he found himself increasingly repelled by those who went after money for money’s sake, or used it to buy power. Unless wealth was chastened by culture or regulated by government, it was at worst predatory, at best boring. He did not care how little time he spent in future with E. H. Harriman. "It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own businesses."
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29 comments:
Wisdom from Ted who enabled the election of Wilson the first of the progressives.
Yes they are all pretty boring. Good at talking about money, though…
…one thing Teddy gets wrong- they aren’t really trying to buy politicians. It’s more about having their phone call answered…
This hits home for me: I’m in my 40s, successful, well off, and quickly realizing I know little beyond my business.
Rich people who inherit money don't know much about making it.
They spend their time learning a wide range of non-monetary subjects to discuss.
Rich people who made their money know a lot about a lot of things, but everything comes back to making money.
There's just too much failure along the way otherwise.
He's likely correct about them being boring and focused only on business. Still, someone paid $19M in 2022 to eat lunch with 91-year-old Warren Buffett. Was it Hunter Biden, Joe, or Corn Pop?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/06/20/warren-buffett-ebay-auction-lunch/7681611001/
Did EH Harriman think he'd be immortalized in a talking picture (Butch Cassidy)?
Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger are very much the exception.
I wonder if Ted ever met Ernest...
The rich Canadian in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Partly inspired by Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook.
Well elon is an exception but bezos zuck wt al probably are
From the headline above: Bill Gates comes to my mind in a nanosecond.
What strikes me about the few very wealthy people I have encountered is not so much that they are ignorant as that they don't feel obliged to be interesting. They tend to assume that everyone they meet just naturally wants to oblige them in every possible way. Because of course, that is typically true.
When I was in grad school, studying physics, I ran into a young woman I went to elementary school with. Her father was a timber baron, insanely wealthy, although I didn't know that when we were in grade school. But I had a letter to the editor published in the local paper, and she called me up and asked me to lunch. She then gave me a tour of their local sawmill (fascinating, I must say. I could have wandered around that place for days), and took me to meet her father in his office. He was quite gracious, and we chatted for a while. And then, as we were preparing to leave, he said, "Well, when you finish school, we'll find you a job for you here". And it was clear to me that he just assumed I wanted to come work in his sawmill, in some unknown capacity. Once I got the physics PhD thing out of the way.
A corollary to Teddy's observation on wealthy businesmen, "that as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own businesses," is that they often pontificate with great authority on subjects they know absolutely nothing about, and are listened to with great seriousness. This deference to wealth is to be avoided by anyone who knows anything about the subject under discussion.
David,
I've been a fan of Warren buffet since I first heard of him in Adam Smith's book the money game in the mid 70s. There is most of a chapter devoted to him. I really wanted to buy some B-H stock but it was $300 at the time and I figured it had peaked. Currently $541,000
John Henry
My nephew 50ish lives in omaha and is here for Xmas.
He told me he once stood behind buffet in the burger King order line. They exchanged a couple of polite words as they waited for their food. Just the way any 2 normal adult strangers might.
He was impressed how down to earth Buffet was,
John Henry
My nephew 50ish lives in omaha and is here for Xmas.
He told me he once stood behind buffet in the burger King order line. They exchanged a couple of polite words as they waited for their food. Just the way any 2 normal adult strangers might.
He was impressed how down to earth Buffet was,
John Henry
Well Teddy Roosevelt was born to substantial wealth. But he blew somewhat more than half his capital on his Dakota ranching adventures. Like Winston Churchill he had to make at least some of his living with his pen.
Sounds like the difference between the fox and the hedgehog.
Specialization.
Sounds like a typical commie simp progressive environmentalist limousine liberal.
To me this quote reflects poorly on TR. Being of wealth and Family he comes off as someone with a European sense of nobility, if you have to work for money you are culturally lesser.
Millions meant something then.
Now everybody's a millionaire...
Rich businessmen "don’t know anything outside their own businesses." And politicians (and political commentators) don't know anything about business.
Prime example #1: Pritzker Family, whether Penny Pritzker, root proponent of Claudine Gay pick at Harvard, or JB Pritzker, inept 2nd term governor of "sinking ship" State of Illinois. Both demonstrate that enormous wealth is no indicator of competence or skill at governance, whether at an institution or government entity.
One of the things that gave Trump trouble as President?
Perhaps he thought all he needed in DC was the art of the deal. I think he hadn't even begun to imagine what a ball of snakes the US Capital is. I don't think in 2016 most of us could have imagined that things are as bad as they are there. Much has been revealed in the intervening years.
And such men, now also women, enable the hobbyists to pursue their academic lives. Such men as Teddy Roosevelt worked hard to make business hard so men who were to be a success had time for little else.
"In the precapitalistic ages writing was an unremunerative art. Blacksmiths and shoemakers could make a living, but authors could not. Writing was a liberal art, a hobby, but not a profession. It was a noble pursuit of wealthy people, of kings, grandees and statesmen, of patricians and other gentlemen of independent means. It was practiced in spare time by bishops and monks, university teachers and soldiers. The penniless man whom an irresistible impulse prompted to write had first to secure some source of revenue other than authorship."
Mises, Ludwig von (1956). The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
Perhaps as the universities and colleges implode respect for those who add value with their innovations rather than those who are parasitic upon society while waving their magic parchments.
"For example : The question being propounded, What is the value of the combined services to man of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, as compared with those of Sir Henry Bessemer? Ninety-nine out of a hundred men of sound judgment would doubtless say, " The value of the services of the two statesmen is quite unimportant, while the value of the services of Mr. Bessemer is enormous, incalculable." But how many of these ninety-nine men of sound judgment could resist the fascination of the applause accorded to the statesmen ? How many of them would have the moral courage to educate their sons for the career of Mr. Bessemer instead of for the career of Mr. Disraeli or of Mr. Gladstone?* Not many in the present state of public sentiment. It will be a great day for man, the day that ushers in the dawn of more sober views of life, the day that inaugurates the era of the mastership of things in the place of the mastership of words."
—Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education (1900) (1886)
John Henry
Warren prefers the Bronco’s on Leavenworth or the McDonald’s at 40th and Dodge.
The rich people I've met, who were all 'slumming it' in their youth, were filled with great advice about everything - except for how to be poor. They would always say 'you should do' this or 'you should do' that, but - once they're told there's no money for such things - then they're out of ideas and your life. The effort that goes into creation was foreign to them.
There's also the rich 'friends' who think you're there to carry their bags as they shop. Hilarious. (On a related note, I'll never forget what a hard time I once had, trying to convince a white family I was not at the airport to carry their bags. It almost got to screaming.) I swear, I've seen it all.
I had to ditch my closest rich friend after he stole $1,000 from me for drugs. He was brilliant, but died one day, sitting under a tree, right after receiving his 1-year sober award from AA.
" ... they don't know anything outside their own businesses"
Clearly, Teddy wouldn't have had anything to learn from lunch with Warren Buffett.
It tires me to talk to politicians. Correction ... it tires me to listen to politicians.
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