Against The Grifters

How wisdom and focus is lost in a world of easy wealth

As the post-election post-mortems have come flooding in over the last week, I want to make sure to say this is not one of them. Frankly, I find myself perturbed at how all the pre-election confusion and uncertainty instantly coalesces into confident proclamations of what obviously happened and how it was all so clear to anyone with eyes to see.

There is one criticism of the Harris campaign that has stuck in my mind allegedly came from a Biden staffer who acerbically flung an accusation of incompetence at the Harris campaign with “How did you spend $1 billion and not win?”

Watching the Harris campaign out of the corner of my eye, I don’t have strong opinions about what they coulda-shoulda done. I’m not one to believe that elections are particularly easy to buy, especially at a national level. Money can increase awareness when something is obscure and maybe repetition over enough time can persuade. But you reach a point of diminishing returns where every new dollar spent isn’t moving the needle enough to justifying spending it.

At the same time, you can’t just leave money lying around in a campaign like this. You can’t spend $800 million and have $200 million left over just because that money can’t be effectively spent to get out votes or change minds. You have to spend it.

Loose money is like blood: the scavengers can smell it a mile away. Not all scavengers are low-lifes. There are plenty of respectable high-class scavengers who can see when the money is flowing and position themselves in a good place for soaking it up. These people and groups don’t really care about the goals and intent of those with the money. They just know that the money river is flowing and it’s time to wade into it and get what they can while the getting is good.

While Oprah didn’t personally request a million dollar fee for her endorsement of Harris, her production company did charge a million dollars to run the town hall where this event took place. Everyone with an ounce of cynicism knows what happened here. Harpo Productions saw a money river, put themselves in front of it knowing that no expense would be denied, and sucked up that money because why not? It’s free money, right?

But it’s not free money. This money has a purpose and that purpose is to move votes. Taking the money knowing that it won’t move votes is a deeply cynical endeavor. It is a low level form of fraud that claims to be business as usual.

All Aboard The Money Train

The money train always attracts grifters. This would be a contained problem if this were limited to the 4 years presidential campaign cycle but grifters getting onboard the money train is a problem anywhere there is the perception of unrestrained spending.

This can happen anywhere there are large and potentially unaccountable sums of money but it is the most damaging when it happens in the public sector. Governments are seen and treated as an endless supply of easy money. As a result, the $30 billion high-speed rail that was going to connect LA to San Francisco becomes a money river for contractors, designers, and environmental regulators and before you know it the project balloons to $170 billion with no end in sight.

The money river is great if you’re drawing water from the shore, but in the meantime the citizens of California are screwed. They are paying a seemingly endless amount of tax money for something they want but will never get.

This is a story that happens over and over again.