POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Rich assholes who had a rough 2022. Who had it the worst?

Let’s start with Kanye and go clockwise.

1. Kanye West

Rapper/producer/billionaire Kanye West (now calling himself “Ye,” but who cares) has long been known for being controversial and over-the-top, but he took it to a whole other level this year. He started spouting anti-Semitic conspiracies from every platform he had. He took a notorious anti-Semite to meet with Donald Trump. He got banned from Twitter, unbanned by Elon Musk, and banned again when the new Chief Twit decided that mixing Swastikas and Stars of David wasn’t quite what he had in mind by “free speech absolutism.” He gave an interview with Alex Jones that made even the unhinged shock-jock blush. Kanye has been dropped left and right by his corporate sponsors, and has been overall #cancelled.

Kanye’s history of “mental illness” provides a potential partial excuse, but a whole lot of mentally ill people don’t end up heiling Hitler.

Musically, Kanye is still capable of putting out tantalizing rhymes and hard-hitting beats (I listened to some of his newer stuff months ago, when he was “beefing” with Pete Davidson, for *cringe* stealing his ex-wife). But he is well past his prime for pop chart relevance, and his extracurricular anti-Semitism ensures his opportunities for collaboration will dry up. His career seems destined for the garbage can. In the space of a few weeks, this has been one of the most spectacular self-inflicted meltdowns by a pop/rap musician ever.

Overall rating: Yeophobia

3. Sam Bankman-Fried

Mr. SBF, as he’s known, ran the crypto exchange FTX and an investment company known as Alameda Research.

Read a crypto article for the exact details, which may fascinate or bore you to death. To make a very long story short, SBF self-dealt with client funds, by siphoning FTX exchange money into Alameda Research investments; when the latter went downhill, the former was taken down with it. A very basic temptation — “I have all this client money lying around, why don’t I do something productive with it and make myself some money too?” — led SBF into a digital-age redux of the oldest financial crime on the books.

(Side-note: The Right-wingosphere has looped SBF into a sprawling conspiracy involving the DNC, the Biden’s, and even Ukraine. These explanations are absurd. The true reason for the FTX collapse is much simpler, and described above. While SBF did donate to Democrats, he also donated to Republicans — a very standard Rich Industry Asshole thing to do.)

“So what?” You might ask. “Crypto is full of scammers, and that’s been known for awhile now. What makes SBF’s downfall significant?”

Well, the scale and speed of the FTX collapse were enormous. SBF was worth over $26 billion at his peak, north of $10 billion just before the bathtub plug got pulled, and his net worth is now… zero. A big fat cipher.

SBF was one of the very most public faces of crypto. He had ambitions of turning crypto mainstream. He had successfully made himself out to be “one of the good ones.” Until all of a sudden, he wasn’t.

Finally, there’s reason to suspect SBF’s self-dealing wasn’t an outlier at all, but is endemic to crypto as a whole. Dozens of faceless SBF’s out there who simply haven’t been found out yet. A growing awareness of crypto’s fundamental flaws at best, or its essential character as a 21st-century Ponzi Scheme at worst, is sinking coin prices everywhere. Wanna buy the dip?

He’s already worth nothing. How much farther can he fall? Well, how’s prison? SBF was arrested in the Bahamas just this week, facing federal wire-fraud & conspiracy charges, up to 115 years.

I don’t know what keeps a guy like SBF up at night more: his own personal loss of fortune and influence, or the idea that he might be remembered by history as the poster-child for the collapse of an entire industry upon which so many staked their futures and dreams. Either way, he’ll have the rest of his life to think about it. He’s only 30.

Overall rating: Bruh

5. Elizabeth Holmes

Convicted in January 2022, and sentenced to 11.25 years in prison, Holmes’ career has spanned from “wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America” to penniless convict and punch-line for any conversation about girlbosses. The damage Holmes has single-handedly done to the perception of women in tech and entrepreneurship is enormous, adding several thick layers of glass back to the proverbial ceiling.

“But wait: isn’t Holmes just like any other cult-leader Silicon Valley asshole? Isn’t her treatment by the media/law/culture/whatever evidence of sexism?”

Not really. The scale of the deception and fraud involved in Theranos was truly on another level. Sure, any number of companies have failed to live up to the revolutionary promises of their founders, but few of them were designed to run patient blood samples through slapdash and haphazard tests, falsify the outcomes, and jeopardize real people’s lives.

Actually, only one of them. And that company was Theranos. Thankfully, this pseudo-medical nonsense was stopped before patients’ bodies started hitting the floor, although a chief scientist did commit suicide.

Overall rating: Near-Miss Mass Murderess

One of this best takes on this situation I’ve seen, they either range from “this is proof that women can’t business” to “this is a setup and anyone who criticizes her is sexist”. I struggled to find any real information on it because of this.

It’s all about over-promising and under-delivering.

If Holmes had just been honest about how speculative the technology was (particularly before running real patient samples), she might not have ever been worth a billion — but she’d be worth something, and she wouldn’t be behind bars.

She’s probably as much of a victim of sexism as she was a beneficiary of people invested in seeing a female entrepreneur succeed.

The Dropout on Hulu is a good series on this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dropout

2. Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell was convicted in 2021, but her sentencing occurred this year, so I’m shooing her into the 2022 villain category anyway.

Boy howdy. The right-hand woman to one of the most notorious child sex-traffickers in our lifetimes. Does it get much worse than that? She and Epstein are the kind of folks who actually make me wish there is a hell — even if there’s a chance I’d be going to hell too, I consider myself fairly confident that I won’t qualify for Satan’s “Epstein/Maxwell” spa treatment.

Anyway. The jury didn’t buy her “just doing a job”-type defenses, and neither did the judge. Maxwell actively recruited, groomed, and handled these kids. She knew exactly what she was doing.

She was handed a sentence of 20 years. She’s 60, so there’s a chance she will see the outside of prison before she dies. Then again, she might not.

(Side-note: I feel bad for anyone with the first name Ghislaine. It’s a rare name, which means it’s now inevitably tainted by association with this pedo-handler, as that’s the only context in which most have ever heard this name. Somehow, the “Jeffrey’s” of the world are doing just fine, even after the likes of Epstein and Dahmer, since there’s just so many other “Jeffrey’s” out there. Not so for the Ghislaines. So pour out some liquor for the Ghislaines who Did Nothing Wrong.)

Overall rating: Pedo-enabler. Very bad.

7. Vladimir Putin

And now we arrive at Vlad Putin: Dear Leader of the Russian Federation, otherwise now known as Russiastan. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve made it this far, let me not hide the ball any longer: I believe Putin is, without doubt, the worst person on this list, and the reigning champion for Worst Person on Earth.

Most of the folks on this list are victims of more common human failings: Narcissism, hubris, wishful thinking. Putin on the other hand is downright Evil with a capital E.

Putin’s history of assassinations, war crimes, repression, and corruption could fill volumes, but the star of the Putin story is the Ukraine War. (I’m sorry, “Special Military Operation.”) In pursuit of this vanity neo-imperalist project, Putin has upended the international order of this century, personally signed the deaths of 100,000 Russians and a similar number of Ukrainians, greenlighted an unknown and never-knowable amount of human trafficking, torture, starvation, freezing, and rape, all of it with no end in sight.

Putin loves to evoke WWII-era propaganda and tropes. The truth is his war in Ukraine is more akin to the historical disasters of WWI and the Russo-Japanese War. The Russian military has been soundly broken and beaten, with no hope of achieving its initial war aims — the only question now is how all this madness ends, with a whimper or in a mushroom cloud.

A note on Putin’s personal wealth. Some estimate that Putin is, in fact, the world’s richest man. The answer is unknowable, since so many people hold wealth on Putin’s behalf, and the connections are all opaque, deliberately so. A Russian oligarch can be a billionaire on paper, but could be tossed out of a window tomorrow. Such are “property rights” as they exist in modern-day Russia. Putin is the state. So, if Putin theoretically owns (or at least has an option on) virtually everything Russians own, then how wealthy is he? Even in a post-sanctions Russia: Very wealthy indeed.

As of this writing, Putin remains in charge of Russia. It’s not immediately clear who might replace him, as he’s done a very good job at systematically dismantling any real threats to his rule and setting up a Potemkin “democracy.” But the idea he will live long and prosper as Russia’s President-for-Life is far less certain after this year.

Will he take the rest of us down with him? He’s the only one on this list who can.

Overall rating: Banan

6. Elon Musk

Bruh. Let’s hit some of the lowlights:

1. Musk admitted that his proposal of a “hyperloop” for California was a fantasy and he had no intention of ever building it, only floated the possibility as a way of derailing the construction of a high-speed rail line;

2. The Thai cave rescue which he Tweeted a lot about but never sent proposed submersibles and didn’t actually help, but did, naturally, call one of the heroes a “pedo guy”;

3. Tried to strong-arm Ukraine into accepting a bad peace deal with Russia by threatening to withhold Starlink (on which he backpedaled), and alternatively, wants the U.S. government to start footing the bill;

4. Alienated one of his children who is trans, to the point the latter cut ties completely and filed to change her last name;

5. Let’s spend some more time with his family, actually. He has 10 children with 3 different women. He is also now the CEO or chief-whatever of 5(?) different companies. So the idea Musk has the proper time to devote to raising any of these children or properly running any of these companies, let alone all of them, is absurd;

6. At Twitter, a company he ultimately had to be forced to buy, he thinks he’s God’s gift to earth on “free speech,” yet has been a total hypocrite on the issue when it comes to comedy/satire, let alone criticism of himself or his companies, and he has otherwise been all over the map in the implementation of his batty ideas at Twitter. These days, Musk spends his free time (what free time?) as a reply-guy for alt-Right influencers with handles like catturd2, proving that some folks’ social media thirst never quenches regardless of how much money they have.

In his cringey, try-hard pursuit of the headlines this year — the one area in which he’s been successful — Musk has frittered away over a hundred-billion dollars of his personal wealth, making him now the *second*-richest person in the world.

More perspective: Musk has lost more money just this year than the rest of the people on this list have ever had, combined (exception: Vladimir Putin. More on him in a minute). Musk loses more money before rolling out of bed than most will ever see in their lifetimes.

Overall rating: Space Karen

4. Donald Trump

He’s in the headlines endlessly, we all know him, let’s not waste much time.

From the FBI “raid” at Mar-a-Lago to the appointment of Special Counsel Smith (from whom indictments are expected shortly), from the low-energy 2024 campaign rollout to the infamous Kanye/Fuentes dinner, and capping off with a series of defeats for his handpicked candidates in key battleground states, Trump’s political star has fallen farther this year than ever. Not by any one scandal, but by an overall creeping sense of “meh” among more moderate Republicans and independents who are finally, finally, (finally) tired of him.

Trump’s 2020 “election fraud” lie proofed him against the label of “loser,” at least among the people he needed — for awhile. After 2022, not so much. The excuses are wearing thin.

Caveats: Trump’s still the most powerful Republican in America. He has shown a supernatural talent for evading accountability. He’s been counted out many times before. The idea a former U.S. President will ever see the inside of a jail cell is still more fanciful than not. But after a year like this, it’s grown more difficult to envision him winning the ‘24 GOP nomination, let alone winning the Presidency again.

Overall rating: Orange Man Even Worse

Ignoring the political side of this, none of the these people had it rough in 2022. The rich didn't have a "bad year". The rich had a great year. They always do. The rich don't "get theirs."
Regardless of losing "richest person in the world" and hurting his businesses by switching parties, Elon could retire tomorrow and his great grandchildren will be living comfortably off the interest of his remaining wealth.
Maxwell didn't "get hers". As soon as the heat dies down she'll be spending her autumn years in a minimum security prison that's not half as bad as a homeless shelter.
Bankman still has a 50/50 shot of avoiding extradition and doing any real time if he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut [that remains to be seen.]
Putin is being personally enriched by the war and win or lose, will die comfortably in his sleep in a decade. The only difference will be whether he's in Moscow or Brazil.
The rich are having a pretty decent 2022...

Kanye is pretty much like every other BHI

It’s a weird subculture for sure

Supremacist Religion, convert and kill who doesn’t. Then later kill the converted for not being pure blooded