Principle-centered leadership

All these personal peculiarities would have remained Hollywood myth had it not been for Trump's political style

If you are reading this piece expecting a discussion on Stephen Covey's book with the same title, please stop. It is not about that. Nor does it concern the topics that usually come under discussion whenever the word is used in this country. Neither political, nor military, or religious or legal. No. This piece is about the leadership that is growingly setting the global agenda. The powerful class of billionaires and in a few exceptional cases, of millionaires. And the crux of the matter here? Houston, we have a problem.

In the 21st century we have witnessed the rise and rise of a new global class. Of the tech billionaires. With bated breath we watched as Jeff Bezos overtook Bill Gates as the world's richest man. Only a few days ago Elon Musk displaced Gates to become the second richest man in the world. To be honest there was no contest. While one man (Gates) has vowed to return all his earned wealth to society in his lifetime, other men are constantly making more money. Bezos has not signed The Giving Pledge founded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet. In its own words the "Giving Pledge is a simple concept: an open invitation for billionaires or those who would be if not for their giving, to publicly commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy." Musk signed it in 2012 and vowed to give half his wealth to charity. He was worth $2 billion back then. So far he has given a $100 million to charity. 

If you look at the updated list of the world's top 10 wealthiest people you are in for a shock. It is a men's club through and through. The world's richest woman is the 12th richest person. And guess the reason behind her recent fortunes? She recently divorced Bezos and got a quarter of his shares in Amazon as a part of her divorce settlement. With a net worth over $68 billion MacKenzie Scott has surpassed L'Oréal heiress Francoise Bettencourt. 

Then there is the curious case of Mark Zuckerberg, the 36-year-old billionaire whose company Facebook has been caught, more than once, harvesting your private data. What do you do when you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar? Blame somebody else. When in 2018 Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, blew the lid off of the data harvesting scandal using an app on Facebook's platform, the company did not take responsibility. And here is the rub. As if the private data of 2.45 billion users and ownership of companies like Instagram and WhatsApp was not enough, in August 2019, Facebook announced the launch of its digital currency Libra. We will return to Zuckerberg's growing ambitions shortly. Let us first flag the concerns about the conduct of the world's wealthy elite.

The first concern is the rapidly increasing income disparity. If Thomas Piketty is to be trusted, the wealthy are getting wealthier and the poor are getting poorer. And the most shocking revelation to him is that the underprivileged do not have any idea how staggering the difference is. Before you dismiss it as alarmism, here is the second concern: too much power in a few hands. During Greece's financial crisis a joke that reportedly went around in Apple's headquarters was that the company could buy more than one country like Greece. Billionaires are getting more powerful than states and the political dumpster fire you see in Washington is just a trailer. Quick reminder: the outgoing US President is a self-proclaimed billionaire too.

The third and perhaps the most important concern is about the peculiar baggage of the members of this super-wealthy class. Musk comes from South Africa, a country where the white population after decades of apartheid, now sees itself as the victim of majoritarian discrimination. Unsurprisingly, with Musk's meteoric rise the debate about race relations and conspiracy theories about white genocide have taken centre stage. Let me be clear. He doesn't need to be a racist. But there are signs that people in his wider orbit might have tracked the germs of this disease to the mainstream. Another example is of Rupert Murdoch. During the early days of his corporation's rise he seemed to offer each region the demand driven news content. Fox News for the US, Sky News for Europe and his native Australia and Star News for Asia especially India. But as Australia's identity crisis and paranoia about China's rise has grown these nuances have disappeared from Murdoch's network. 

Then there is the issue of their take-no-prisoners approach to competition. Thirst, ambition and absence of qualms often leads them to play dirty. Israel's PM Netanyahu for instance is under investigation for accepting bribes from Arnon Milchan, an Israeli Hollywood film producer, and James Packer, an Australian billionaire. Recent propaganda campaigns against George Soros and Bill Gates appear to be an outcome of competition for influence among their fellow billionaires. Political corruption, hate, xenophobia and unvarnished ambitions of the super-rich ostensibly have joined forces and are consequently wreaking havoc with our lives. The Economist, in its latest edition, points out, that even as under Modi's stewardship India grows poorer the personal fortunes of Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani are touching the skies. The tail is now wagging the dog. Various states and societies facilitated the rise of such billionaires in the vain hope that they would become force multipliers for their governments. But now that they have grown bigger than their states, they are busy carving their countries and the world into fiefdoms after installing reactionary and corrupt elements in government. 

Just to highlight how governments have facilitated the rise of these tycoons you need to read former president Obama's recent book. He makes it abundantly clear that his pursuit of clean energy options led him to offer concessions to Musk's Tesla. The latter also benefited profusely from the former's space policy. Bezos' Amazon does not pay any taxes in the US in return for his investment in the country's cloud infrastructure which makes companies like Netflix possible.

Frankly all these personal peculiarities would have remained Hollywood myth to us had it not been for President Trump's political style or outlook. It is evident that wealth alone does not moderate the sense of entitlement that comes with it. Now when we come across reports speculating about Zuckerberg's potential run for public office we are troubled by them. Bringing these poeple into power is not very difficult but removing them might cost you an arm and a leg.

Of course you cannot put this genie back in the bottle. But at least two things can happen. One, the governments be urged to first judge the character of the businessmen they invest in. Two, to try to convince the super-rich to adhere to some semblance of principle-centered leadership. Perhaps the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can show them the way.