This is excellent writing, and I'm going to forward it to my brother, who seems to be on the cusp of joining this group of people. It's a type of existence that is strange to me.
Thank you! It is a strangely disembodied kind of existence, unanchored to any particular place. Arguably this follows a century-long cultural trend of abstracting life (ever hear of a 1989 book called "Disappearing Through the Skylight"? The author was a prophet, except for dying before the book was actually published.) https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Through-Skylight-Technology-Twentieth/dp/014011582X
Anyway, I hope your brother enjoys the piece, subscribes, and becomes a high-paying founding member. I take Bitcoin!
What I thought was so perceptive (among many other things) is the generational difference; there's 12 years between us, and he got a later start in his business life, and so the lives and expectations of my cohort of Expensive Suited People and his have differed in exactly the way you noted. Mine in 1995 were essentially the same as they'd been in say, 1960--rich, cosmopolitan, jetting this way and that, but anchored into some country (usually the US or UK). A Yale friend of mine was born in South Africa, and then went to London after college, where he has stayed -- so it followed the lines of the Anglo-American Empire; there was a tranche of people who went to the former Soviet Union after 1989, but they were the opposite of stateless, even if their state was "the West." My Yale friend is thoroughly European.
My brother's cadre seems to be fundamentally mobile. American education (or Oxbridge/LSE) seems to have been the standard for them, but once educated, they could be a banker in London or an ad exec in Singapore or a consultant in São Paulo, or some mix of all three.
I think the only thing that could turn the clock back is a war, where borders suddenly become hard, and there are very different standards/rights in certain countries and not in others. Ironically this statelessness seems to have arisen from Pax Americana.
Don't know if bro or dad will subscribe but am making the pitch! Keep up the fine work.
This is excellent writing, and I'm going to forward it to my brother, who seems to be on the cusp of joining this group of people. It's a type of existence that is strange to me.
Thank you! It is a strangely disembodied kind of existence, unanchored to any particular place. Arguably this follows a century-long cultural trend of abstracting life (ever hear of a 1989 book called "Disappearing Through the Skylight"? The author was a prophet, except for dying before the book was actually published.) https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Through-Skylight-Technology-Twentieth/dp/014011582X
Anyway, I hope your brother enjoys the piece, subscribes, and becomes a high-paying founding member. I take Bitcoin!
What I thought was so perceptive (among many other things) is the generational difference; there's 12 years between us, and he got a later start in his business life, and so the lives and expectations of my cohort of Expensive Suited People and his have differed in exactly the way you noted. Mine in 1995 were essentially the same as they'd been in say, 1960--rich, cosmopolitan, jetting this way and that, but anchored into some country (usually the US or UK). A Yale friend of mine was born in South Africa, and then went to London after college, where he has stayed -- so it followed the lines of the Anglo-American Empire; there was a tranche of people who went to the former Soviet Union after 1989, but they were the opposite of stateless, even if their state was "the West." My Yale friend is thoroughly European.
My brother's cadre seems to be fundamentally mobile. American education (or Oxbridge/LSE) seems to have been the standard for them, but once educated, they could be a banker in London or an ad exec in Singapore or a consultant in São Paulo, or some mix of all three.
I think the only thing that could turn the clock back is a war, where borders suddenly become hard, and there are very different standards/rights in certain countries and not in others. Ironically this statelessness seems to have arisen from Pax Americana.
Don't know if bro or dad will subscribe but am making the pitch! Keep up the fine work.
Here was my take on this from 2018, Quentin: https://rogerkay.medium.com/daily-dose-of-cynicism-the-corporate-city-state-6e35e82cf387
That's very good. Hard to believe you thought you were writing fiction.
I think I saw it as more of a blueprint.