View: The new playground of the super-rich | Economic Times

‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,’ wrote F Scott Fitzgerald in his 1926 short story, ‘The Rich Boy’. He meant it in terms of what the very rich of his time spend on. Today, it can apply to a class of people who don’t even think like the rest of us. Over the last few weeks, two billionaires — Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos — felt the need to go to the edge of Earth and almost into space. To get a good look at the curvature of Earth.For people like you and me, who can’t even manage a holiday to Manali, these are not thoughts that enter our heads, even if we have disposable income. The curvature of Earth looks fine on our TV without needing to spend billions to build a rocket to go and actually find out.In the early 20th century, people often thought that having money meant they can enter a room and fit in. Now, having money means entering a room and changing the room to fit you. A Dubai millionaire may keep a pet tiger for his amusement. A new-age billionaire in the US may try to come up with an alternative to oxygen for breathing, or use his wealth to spread whatever fake news he wishes to become president. The playground of the rich now isn’t just personal joy. It is personal joy from changing everyone else’s lives.Then there’s Elon Musk. Not just happy with having built a fully electric car, he’s moved his sights to a currency based on the photo of a dog. And enough people in the world think this is a legitimate thing. And it most likely is. I should add that this is his side project. His ‘syllabus homework’ is to find habitable space on Mars. Yes, that’s correct — another planet. He feels he’s ‘done with Earth’.True, most of us feel that way during this pandemic. But we long to step out of the house safely, not social distance ourselves to another planet. But Musk does. That is how he spends his Sundays while the rest of us look up cat videos on YouTube.Not just happy with having conquered our phones, our money and our data, and clearly not getting enough thrill at the edge of space, some rich people think it is time to go after what we eat. Some Silicon Valley billionaires are spending their personal wealth to come up with ‘no meat’ meat. This is plant-based meat that looks and tastes like meat, and is made in a lab funded by them.I miss the days when billionaires spent their days in a swimming pool having affairs, driving fast cars and buying art. Or even when mutton curry was just mutton curry without some billionaire having made a goat entirely out of grass.Not to be left far behind, Indian billionaires are also no longer interested in good old tax evasion, foreign holidays, and black money. Or even bribing officials to keep the status quo. One large Indian billionaire family talks about ‘controlling flow’ — the flow of electricity, goods, people through ports, airports, electric supply. Perhaps, their next ambition will be to control the flow of emotions.One fintech billionaire has the modest ambition to stop all 1.3 billion Indians from using cash — this he lists under ‘personal passion’. Another often talks about data being the ‘new oil’ and a wish to control this new oil and all online retail. Who knows? He may go on a proper space mission — not just a sub-orbital one like Branson and Bezos but to the edge of Jupiter.Billionaires now think money is not for personal pleasure but to change the world — like Miss Universes, but with lotsa money. I am a child of the ’80s. All you had to show then in a film to depict a villain’s ‘massive’ wealth was a revolving bed, with a mirror on the ceiling.