The Habsburg Jaw

Elitism and The End

Over the millennia, democracy has provided many benefits to nations which have adopted it as their form of government. One notable advantage of democracy, particularly over monarchies and imperial dynasties, is that your leaders are far more likely to be of sound body and mind. 

When rulers came from specific families, inbreeding was rampant. Many of history’s most prominent rulers suffered deformities as a result. King Tut was afflicted with a club foot, and likely died from genetic illnesses complicated by malaria. The Habsburg dynasty was so inbred that every member had the same facial deformity, known as “The Habsburg Jaw.” Inbreeding ultimately ended that dynasty with King Charles II. It’s believed that his infertility can be explained by his DNA, which was as inbred as the offspring of a parent-child or brother-sister relationship.

The author himself suffers from a Habsburg jaw.

Now, however, it’s difficult to say if democracy affords us that same privilege. Watching those two old farts at the debate, desperately in need of ChapStick, confused by blinding lights and tinnitus, dribbling and sharting into their Depends... it wasn’t obvious that our country has fared so much better than ancient Egypt or 17th century Spain. The fate of our country is up for grabs between two men at a diner counter, one yelling at the waitress about the texture of his eggs and the other telling her she has a gorgeous set of stems. Of course, America is ruled by a few prominent families (Bush, Kennedy, Sheen), but weren’t our leaders at least supposed to be hot? 

I got my hair cut this morning, and even my barber was saying that this feels like the end. He seems like a well-adjusted guy. And he doesn’t even read Chazzy’s World! But the sense that things are crumbling grows increasingly undeniable for all of us. Between me, you, and my hairdresser, our little death cult of American collapse might be big enough to head into the bunker and await the end. And interestingly, we have another potential new member willing to walk around with a “The End Is Near” sign: Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund. In an interview with MarketWatch, Dalio said, “The United States is a 75-year-old empire and it is exhibiting signs of decline.” Dalio singled out income inequality as the greatest symptom of America’s impending collapse. And he’s right! America’s level of inequality surpasses any other society in history, including all the ones led by inbred walking jawbones. For that, Ray wins this week’s Chazzy’s World-Ayatollah Khomeini Death To America Award. Congrats, Ray!

And how can you disagree? Every week, particularly in the Pandemic Era, brings a fresh new horror of inequity in this country. This time around, we have the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney to blame for mismanaging his theme parks. In the same week that 28,000 park workers were laid off, The Walt Disney Company restored executive pay to pre-Covid levels. There is a level of contempt for working people in this country that is so brazen, so unabashed, that it practically begs for mass rebellion. Surely watching the Lemon Party guys argue is not a sufficient safety valve for all that heat. 

But Ray Dalio is not exactly a Bernie Bro. In the same interview, he notes that “capitalism [is good] at producing productivity,” which is both wonderfully alliterative and completely meaningless. It also begs the question: what does Ray Dalio produce? His net worth of $16.9 billion comes almost entirely from hedge fund management fees and his own investments. What did he build? What did he make? What did he “produce”? Ray Dalio is proof that capitalism is ultimately much better at reproduction, namely of wealth into more wealth. And those fees he was collecting for the supposedly genius portfolio? It’s all index funds! More than 80% of his portfolio is generic ETFs, not far off from what you get with a basic Acorns account. Hmm, maybe the Chazzy’s World-Ayatollah Khomeini Death To America Award Selection Committee made a mistake…

However, the New York Times reported this week that Ray has been producing something pretty big: a 286-foot undersea exploration ship. Dalio’s OceanXplorer houses 85 crew members, three submarines, two undersea robots, and a partridge in a pear tree. Purchased at a cost of several hundred million dollars, the OceanXplorer represents a new frontier in deep sea discovery. But why did Ray Dalio buy this? He credits a love of the oceans that started when he was a child. Ok, this could be a lifelong Jules Verne fantasy. However, Dalio also has a child who is an associate producer of ocean documentaries for National Geographic who inspired the purchase. This makes the OceanXplorer the all-time funniest thing a rich guy has done to give a loser son a leg up. 

I suspect something else. In Principles, Dalio’s much-acclaimed 123-page LinkedIn post of a book, he notes that the “return on investment” of deep sea exploration is far better than that of space exploration. He adds that the comparatively small amount of money spent on discovering the oceans is a “riddle of the modern world.” And who is it spending all this money exploring space anyway? Oh right! It’s Elon Musk’s SpaceX (again with the X names) and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins (would actually be a better name for an ocean exploration). Oh, I get it! Every mega-rich guy has to have one of these companies. And since Musk and Bezos have a lot more money than Dalio, it makes sense for him to go into the oceans where he can do more with less competition. As I wrote about in my discussion of Bill Gates and the billionaire monopoly on science, this ultimately comes down to philanthropy as a self-important tax dodge. Glad we got to the bottom of that!

Whether you’re running for president or amassing billions of dollars, you need the same thing: an unfathomably colossal ego. Like the Habsburg jaw of yore, a deliriously inflated head might be the physical manifestation of power in our time. Even if you have billions of dollars and amass everything there is to want on Earth, that urge to have it all can’t be quenched. So, as aspiring demigods, they turn their attention beyond Earth to the skies and seas. 

On some level, I understand. Since I was small, I’ve been fascinated with the search for extraterrestrial life. I believe we will find intelligent life before I die and it will be the most important moment in human history. I even used to donate some of my computer’s processing power to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, to help parse intergalactic radio waves for coherent signals. With the recent encouraging news from Venus, my excitement is renewed. If I had a couple billion in the bank, I’d probably put it towards looking for aliens. Because of this, I have a unique personal method for thinking about who to elect for president. If we ever make contact with alien life, POTUS might well be the person who talks first. So, when choosing to vote for, ask yourself: Who would I want to welcome aliens to Earth? I really don’t think either of our options would be very good at greeting an ET. Trump would be body-negative towards it and Joe would somehow use an undiscovered anti-alien slur while giving it an extended hug.

But the odds might not be so good for POTUS anymore. NASA, like most of our federal government, has been gutted. Its recent collaborations with SpaceX heralded the coming privatization of space. It’s far more likely that a billionaire’s space agency will find a Venutian before the government. Alien encounters, like everything else, can be bought for the right price. 

This is exactly what Ray Dalio is talking about. This insane level of inequality cannot hold. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are far more likely to talk to aliens than the average American. For most people, the American dream of owning a 286-foot oil tanker or rocket ship is just that: a dream. Ray Dalio has three submarines, while the average American has zero. Sooner or later, something has to give.