Billionaires in the News: Trump wants to buy Greenland. As I write this show description, I realize I missed a huge pun opportunity when I failed to say “Trumpelstiltskin.” It’ll make sense when you hear the segment. Really kicking myself over this one. The main news item for this week is the Business Roundtable announcement that “fiduciary responsibility to shareholders” is no longer the First and Only Rule of Business. This segment is part of our ongoing project to track instances of rich people calling for reforms to capitalism. A new wrinkle has emerged in the rhetoric: they’re pushing a “return” to a pre-80s form of “ethical” capitalism that considers the interests of all stakeholders (i.e., everyone else in society). Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a NYT editorial and went on The Daily podcast to parrot the false history being peddled by the rich: that there was a time prior to the deregulatory Reagan era during which capitalism operated in a more ethical mode for the benefit of society at large. This is false. Capitalists will never choose to operate for the benefit of society at large. They will only respond to pressure from other forces that seek to rein in capitalist excess.

The first billionaire segment this week (17:00) covers Blair Parry-Okeden, an heiress to the Cox Enterprises fortune. Parry-Okeden lives in Australia and doesn’t have much of a public profile. She might be the most anonymous billionaire we’ve covered so far, yet she is Australia’s richest person. Given the dearth of information on Parry-Okeden, Joe decides to cover the Cox fortune more generally, including heirs James Kennedy, Anne Cox-Chambers (lmao), and the current CEO Alex Taylor. Cox owns a lot of different things, including Auto Trader magazine. We end up talking a little about coupons.

The second billionaire segment covers Richard Peery and his business partner John Arrillaga (38:15). Peery and Arrillaga got rich by building office space in Silicon Valley. We begin with a bit of a tangent about inventor of the transistor William Shockley (a vile man who would absolutely write for Quillette if he were alive today). Most of the buildings Peery-Arrillaga constructed were “tilt-ups,” a type of concrete slab building that’s especially vulnerable to earthquakes (which was known at the time they were building them). Last, we discuss Arrillaga’s daughter, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen (married to Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame). She runs a consulting firm that advises rich people on how to give their money to worthy causes. Like all consulting, it gives off huge scam vibes.

Show links:

Shareholder Value is No Longer Everything, Top CEOs Say:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundtable-ceos-corporations.html

Alex Taylor Interview 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SCMUFZyjtc

Alex Taylor Interview 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2FrtjYNKuI

Coupon: The Movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQUXoH6g97c&t=323s

A portrait of Blair Parry-Okeden:

http://thisisnofantasy.com/home/vn-blair-parry-okeden-1000pw-2/

“The Secretive Billionaire Who Built Silicon Valley”:

https://fortune.com/2014/07/07/arrillaga-silicon-valley/

Tilting at Danger: Loose soils and cheap construction clash in Silicon Valley's "Golden Triangle":

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/10.14.99/tiltup-9941.html

New Yorker Summary of Zuckerberg’s Newark Schools Gift:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled

Techcrunch article on Arrillaga-Andreessen:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/09/laura-arrillaga-andreessen-argues-for-bringing-a-data-driven-mindset-to-philanthropy/

Cory Booker’s Charter Schools Retreat:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cory-booker-charter-school-support_n_5d45c744e4b0acb57fcd4ebb

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