Dream Log: Small-Town Politics and Autism

I dreamed I was in a small town on the west coast, in Oregon, Washington or British Columbia. The town's population couldn't have been as much as 50,000. It had many restaurants, bars, hotels and clubs which did a flourishing out-of -town business. Two men were among those struggling for control of the town's money and politics, one who looked and acted like Elon Musk and one who looked and acted like Mark Zuckerberg. 

 

But they weren't world-famous billionaires. Their business was concentrated in this small town. It was speculated that they both might be autistic.

Like the real Elon Musk, the local businessman who looked like him lied all the time, about absolutely everything, so that being autistic appeared to be just one more thing he was lying about. Like the real Mark Zuckerberg, the businessman who looked and acted like him really did seem to be autistic, and like Zuckerberg, and unlike, say, Daryl Hannah, he definitely could not be said to be glamorizing  the condition, except perhaps for hardcore Brent Spiner fans,

I was little-known in this town and wanted to stay that way, but video and audio of me looking and sounding strangely -- for example, I sing. Sometimes I sing intentionally badly, to amuse myself -- began showing up in the local media and on the Internet. This led to my becoming enmeshed in the business struggle between the liar who looked like Musk and the creepy dweeb who looked like Zuckerberg. I wasn't sure I trusted Not-Zuck, but he was definitely better than Not-Musk, so by default I ended up on Team Not-Zuck. (In the dream these two were called by their names, but I don't remember their names.)

Then the whole dream shifted to something resembling the TV series "Alias." Not-Musk now did the majority of his business  from local clubs, sending his minions out to physically fight with Not-Zuck's minions. 

At one point I and two other members of Team Not-Zuck were racing through town in an Audi e-tron at dusk, heading toward the beach. There was a Chase bank on the beach. One of the exterior walls of this small bank building was completely covered with video screens and neon stock tickers, and buried somewhere within all of that was the clue to our next move.

We slammed to a screeching stop in the parking lot, poured out of the car, and soon one of the other guys was howling with glee. "Chase is going to give me $225 to open an account," he yelled. 

This guy had ADD. We got his head back in the game, and eventually we found the time and place where Not-Musk and Not-Zuck could secretly meet, out of the eye of the extraordinarily-vigilant local business journalists.

At this point I made up my mind to face Not-Zuck, and tell him that I had had enough, that I was out.

Masters Of The Universe, Gates vs Zuckerberg, And Is Gates The Only One Fighting?

Gore Vidal advised keeping both of one's hands firmly clamped over one's wallet anytime one was anywhere near a billionaire. Gore was very, very, very smart, and seemed sincere in his advice and his concern for the little fellas. Also, he met a few billionaires personally and I haven't yet. (I've known a few people who may have become billionaires since the last time I saw them. Or maybe I'm overestimating their success. And no, I can't put in a good word for you with them, it's been a long, long time since I've seen any of these people and I have no reason to think that they're at all well-disposed toward me and just dying for my input on how best to invest their enormous wealth.) When I first heard Gore's advice I was surprised, because from my point of view Gore was pretty close to being a billionaire himself. Ten million dollars, or three hundred million or however much Gore was worth at the time, versus a billion or a hundred billion -- what's the difference? I thought. It was all filthy stinking rich to me. Since then, however, Gore's apparent conception of billionaires as a race apart, as people quite UNlike him, has only served to clearly underscore what I had begun to perceive long before: that almost no-one thinks of him- or herself as rich. Almost everybody seems to stare with gnawing envy at someone who has a still bigger pile of lucre.

And in any case, Gore's advice was not about the size of the pile but about the behavior of the tycoon, and perhaps he was entirely right, perhaps what separated him from a billionaire was that he wouldn't rip you off at the earliest opportunity and the billionaire would. I like what the Gates Foundation is doing, but I haven't forgotten that Gates amassed his billions by eliminating his competition, beating them in price wars and/or buying them out, creating monopolies. There are Carnegie Libraries and Institutions and Foundations doing good things, but I can't hear about any one of them without thinking about how Carnegie treated his many thousands of employees. (Very badly, is how.) I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg amassed his pile of cash by pure genius or pure goodness, either, but the fact is that both Gates and Zuckerberg are now applying massive piles of money, and large portions of their managerial skills, toward attempts to make the world a better place.

So, good. Thing is, Gates just publicly dissed Zuckerberg for, in Gates' view, thinking that bringing Internet access to the world's poor is the solution to their problems. It's more important, Gates says, to combat malaria, and to get food and water to people dying of hunger and thirst.

And of course he's right, it is more important, it is more urgent. Thing is -- when did Zuckerberg say that Internet access was THE solution? Unless I'm mis-informed, Zuckerberg called Internet access AN important part of efforts to help the poor, not THE solution to all their problems.

With massive problems like poverty, disease, pollution, there are no single solutions. Solar power isn't THE solution to humanity's self-inflicted problems brought on by our energy consumption -- solar power is ONE OF the solutions, along with wind power, geothermal power, public transportation, walking and biking more and driving less and many other things. Ironically, if someone here is guilty of oversimplifying things and believing in a magic bullet to help the poor, it's Gates, with his single-issue focus on disease. Yes, it's great, and tremendously important, what he's doing to fight malaria and AIDS and other epidemics, no, he shouldn't stop. But instead of criticizing Zuckerberg for spreading the Internet, why not, oh, say -- work WITH Zuckerberg, use Zuckerberg's new networks to help get doctors and medicine and mosquito nets and so forth to those who need them, to strengthen the chains of relief logistics and information? Remember when "synergy" used to be a big buzzword? Maybe you're too young to remember that time. It was before Microsoft got huge. I just wonder whether Gates' attitude toward Zuckerberg's give-poor-people-the-hook-up efforts doesn't reflect exactly the same inability to play well with others which the world knows all too well from Microsoft's business practices. I'm not trying to interfere with your charity work, Bill. Exactly the opposite: I'm trying to help you do it better.