Just let the wealthy sail away

Last week I wrote about Jeff Bezos and his yacht. Poor Mr Bezos. All he was trying to do was launch the thing but the citizens of Rotterdam, to whom he had brought millions of dollars of business, had banded together to pelt it with eggs.

I’m pleased to report that he has now managed to get the boat out of the boatyard, but to do so he was forced to dismast it and then tow it downstream at two in the morning, slinking through the night like some common criminal.

And what was his crime? To be rich. To have fulfilled the dream of every lottery-ticket-buying biffer of eggs, and he did it by his own efforts.

He created wealth, he entrepreneured, he did what he’d been told was good in the capitalist free market.

And his reward? To be hated. You and I can launch our yachts unmolested but not poor Jeff. He is threatened with the eggs of envy.

Alert readers may detect a hint of a change of tone from last week, and I am not ashamed to admit it.

For I have gone on a journey this week, destination Damascus, stopping on the way for a little cataract surgery. And what sent me on the journey was an article in this newspaper.

Travel journalist Brook Sabin, whom I have never met but with whom I sympathise for having to maintain the myth that travel is glamorous, made a discovery.

He chanced on Shangri-la.

He gazed on the land that we mortals are not supposed to even know of.

Mr Sabin peeped through the frosted glass of the Elite Priority One lounge at Auckland Airport.

Well may you gasp. This is the land beyond Koru.

Entry is by invitation only. ‘‘Membership is thought to number about 100, including chief executives of top New Zealand companies and a university vice chancellor.’’

These are men and women who fly business class around the world to do things so important that only they can do them.

And Air New Zealand, the people’s airline, makes so much money out of them, that it has built the EP1 to keep them sweet.

The VIP treatment dished out at the EP1 is, according to Mr Sabin, a ‘‘closely guarded secret’’.

But not closely guarded enough, for he has discovered that each new member receives, among other things, a personalised boxed titanium pen and a personalised artistic representation of their previous year’s flying data.

Salivating? Me too. Nothing says success like a pen with your name on it. I’d have loved one, aged 7.

My previous year’s flying data? Hail the great voyager! Call me Odysseus!

The article describes these things as gifts, but they are not gifts. They are just bribes and flattery.

Air New Zealand is sucking up to these people in order to make more money from them.

Which brings us to the difficulties of the rich and successful.

Whom can they ever believe? Whom can they trust? Their status corrupts everything around them.

King Lear understood this: ‘‘Go to. They are not men of their words. They told me I was everything. ‘Tis a lie. I am not ague-proof.’’

But such self-knowledge is hard-won. It cost Lear his sanity and his only loving daughter.

All that the rich want from the world is what we all want: a little love, a little honest laughter.

But all they ever get is yes sir, no sir, resentment, flattery and personalised titanium pens.

No wonder some of them buy hundredmetre yachts in which to sail away from a world that has betrayed them.

The least we can do is to let them go. Pity the rich.

Nothing says success like a pen with your name on it. I’d have loved one, aged 7.