Generation Bubble

As the nation’s economic prospects with each passing day begin more and more to resemble a scraped bong, its good to pause a moment to reflect on on the nature of the universe and of humanity, and how they contribute to our current predicament. So here’s to a little of the ol’ class resentment, alive and well in the 21st century!

I’ve lived long enough to recognize that the universe contains many marvels. The Higgs boson, Coldplay, cosplay, just about anything having to do with hipsters — these along with many, many other phenomena continue to mystify me.

But I’ve also lived long enough to recognize that the universe contains a great many more drearily predictable regularities. I’ve learned that no matter how dire the economic situation, how acute the peril to most everyone on the planet, I can always count on the filthy rich to lord it over everyone.

Meet Oculus, the latest plaything for the rich and shameless. Daniel Yoh over at technogad describes Oculus as

a long distance cruising yacht. The exterior styling is representative of the jaw and eye socket bone structure of large oceanic fish and mammals. It features a dramatic reverse bow configuration and a “low rider profile”.

That’s right. Along with sleek, cetacean-like details comes a little bit of ghetto fab. Whoever buys Oculus can turn a tidy profit renting it out for rap video shoots — or even porno. And such profitability is a good thing, because command of a water whip as pimp as Oculus doesn’t come cheap. The yacht commands a cool US$ 95 million,  a price that puts it out of reach of just about everyone except maybe Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros, Oprah, and the board members of Goldman Sachs.

Though most of us consider a recession as a time to rein in expenditures, the rich continue to show us that primitive accumulation means never having to say you’re sorry. To them, austerity is simply slumming, a Rumspringa for the silver-spoon set, something to be gotten out of one’s system before entering The Wharton School.  The rich may be many things, but one thing they should never be is boring. Fortunately, Boston architect Kevin Schopfer has arrived to deliver the rich from that unseemly, unfashionable possibility. He considers it his mission to see to it that ”luxury yachts should move away from generic boat shapes to something more playful,” a recent CNN.com story reports. And with Oculus he has seen his mission through.

LOL fat cats: ultra-rich worry not aboard a hardened yacht.

Playfulness in a yacht is all fine and good for the Hamptons or Monte Carlo. But in more perilous parts of the globe, ostentation takes a different form. The June 15, 2009 edition of The Daily Mail reports on Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s latest entry into the excessive vessel contest:

It is the biggest private yacht in existence and comes with a missile-detection system, two helipads, a luxury spa, swimming pool and a miniature submarine.

But when you’re Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, only the most ostentatious displays of wealth will do.

His latest baby is the Eclipse, a 557-footer reported to have cost a staggering £300million.

To keep the oligarch safe, the Eclipse has a military-grade missile defence system, armour-plating around Abramovich’s master suite and bullet-proof windows.

There is also a private submarine, which doubles as an escape pod.

That Abramovich felt the need to harden his yacht certainly comes as disappointing news. It makes one wish for a juster world, one in which oligarchs can enjoy the fruits of their predations free from fear of reprisal. One day, perhaps, we’ll have such a world.

Meanwhile, landlubbers for whom the yachting life is but the stuff of 70s lite rock confront the long emergency of health care. Premiums rocket ever upward, soon to reach the point where they might as well be yachts for the amount most Americans will have to fork over.

Paul Creeden over at Buddha’s Pillow sums the situation up nicely, connecting to current political impasse on single-payer health insurance to the prerogatives of the upper crust. “US citizens are allowing themselves to be ruled by a plutocracy,” he writes:

The current whining of the Democrats in Congress that ‘the votes aren’t there’ for universal health care for American citizens, when there are a majority of Democrats in the Congress, is the open admission that we no longer have a two-party democracy in the US. We have a plutocracy: Government by the wealthy for the interests of the wealthy.

Creeden goes on to draw a useful distinction, one which highlights the degree to which semantics influence the health-care debate:

Universal health care would mean that any US citizen or legal resident would have the ability to access health care (medical assistance or treatment) anywhere in the US at any time it was required without worry about being bankrupted by that need. In other words, medical care as a human and civil right.

Universal health coverage keeps up the illusion that medical care is a commodity, not a human and civil right. This is the position of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry, the wealthy interests who obviously own our Congress lock, stock and barrel. So, the Congress will keep funneling customers to the insurance companies. More than ever, since every US citizen will be forced to buy private insurance in order to get medical treatment.

That legislative stooges for the HMOs and Big Pharma would like to see political action limited to health coverage comes as no surprise. After all, to do otherwise would wipe out huge profit potential and thus shut a lot of folks out of the yacht market.

The choice with which the plutocrats saddle Americans reminds me of the scene (warning: NSFW) in Martin Scorscese’s 1995 film Casino where the casino boss, played by Robert De Niro, discovers two guys cheating at blackjack. Already strapped citizens get the money and the hammer, or they get to walk away — but they don’t get both.

Something to contemplate over a sultry summer weekend.