Ralph Nader – what a guy!  After all that he’s done, and it’s a lot, now he’s author of a book of fiction, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!"  Not fiction as we know it, but another category entirely, what he calls “a practical utopia” where he posits scenarios of real-life multi-millionaires solving real-life world problems – with their own money and expertise.  I just picked up a copy from the library - a tome, I tell you. A large (700 page) yellow tome. Nader asserts there is enough money tied up in the assets of the super rich to solve intractable problems like education, health care, etc., and also the ability to do so, if only there was the imagination, willingness and resolve. In effect, he means to show us the super-rich as heroes, here to save the day and the planet – using the superpowers they possess: money and the ability to manage people and information. Interesting concept...

The tone of the book, while mildly tongue in cheek, is not ironic so much as proscriptive, “this is how it could be done”. Nader is not dumping on the rich. In fact, his list of super-rich is hand-picked by their ongoing commitments to social and economic change: Walter Buffet is at the head of the board table at a hypothetical summit in Hawaii, surrounded by the likes of Bill Cosby, Ross Perot, Ted Turner, Yoko Ono, George Soros.  I can’t say yet what some of the proposed solutions are, or what kind of analysis they are based on. But, I will say, Nader is not a bad writer.  Maybe this is his new niche. Having moved on from activist crusader to political gadfly to political spoiler, perhaps he has found license to do something different — offering something, rather than tearing down – using literature to reflect and change society, one art’s chief and earliest purposes.

I’m not sure I have Nader’s optimism about these new superheroes. In fact, I worry a bit about the super-rich, the more and the less virtuous.  Seen through this lens – “you could alleviate tremendous suffering with all your money, but choose not to,” the plight of the super rich reminds me of the Bible verse about how hard it is for rich folks to fit through the camel’s eye. That same passage contains one of Jesus’ most straightforward and unambiguous messages:  when the wealthy young man asks what he should do to attain heaven, Jesus says “sell your goods and give the money to the poor.” But the rich man can’t do it, and walks away sad. The problem is, I think, that kind of wealth so insulates a person that they cannot fathom deprivation without a loss of identity; and all their interactions with other humans are colored by what money can do to make their situation safer, more pleasant, less inconvenient, controlled. While money can create the appearance of heaven on earth, it is ultimately a lonely place, separated from the diverse and colorful mass of humanity, and often, it seems, not a very happy place, either.

Yet, there appears to be hope for the super-rich.  I read recently in the Boston Globe about this kind of club for the super-rich. “Bill Cummings (of Woburn, MA) and his wife, Joyce, were rubbing elbows with the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates at an annual meeting for 69 American billionaires who have pledged to give at least half their personal wealth to charity. They have signed the Giving Pledge, a charitable initiative started last year by Buffett and the Gates to increase charitable giving in this country."  I wonder if somebody read Nader’s book.

I’d like to close with Tracy Chapman, singer and song writer. I can’t say it better than she does in “Mountains o Things”

I won't die lonely
I'll have it all prearranged
A grave that's deep and wide enough
For me and all my mountains o' things

Oh they tell me
There's still time to save my soul
They tell me
Renounce all
Renounce all those material things you gained by
Exploiting other human beings

Mostly I feel lonely
Good good people are
Good people are only
My stepping stones
It's gonna take all my mountains o' things
To surround me
Keep all my enemies away
Keep my sadness and loneliness at bay