Your Thoughts Exactly

I took a break from faux-job searching to catch up with some old friends. A visit from Senor Dorfe, a trip to Martha’s Vineyard to meet up with one Daniel Harris, and a jaunt down to NYC where I ran into KenandSarah, and Il Duce.

Martha’s Vineyard is a quaint, secluded island, that attempts to maintain an “old-time” feel to it, through removing itself from the instant information/gratification, society that dominates the rest of the East Coast of the United States. There is almost no cell phone reception, and you have to rely on dial-up internet.

Of course to get away from such hassles, you have to give over your pound of flesh. And, as the towns of Vineyard Haven and Edgartown are rife with crowds during the summer weekends, you really need to pay through the nose to get some damn peace and quiet. How much am I talking about? One private beach, in Chilmark on the southwest coast of the island, has a gate with a padlock preventing cars from driving down the private road to the beach. The price of a key to said gate? 400,000 dollars.

If I was paying 400 thou for the rights to use a beach, I’d expect there to be unicorns prancing in the sand and mermaids emerging from the water every so often. I did manage to make it down to the beach on foot, but sadly, it was nighttime, so if there were any mermaids (or mer-men) around, I did not see them. I did successfully pee in the ocean several times, and I am able to posit that 400 grand probably would buy the added satisfaction of knowing you can pee where few others can.

Coming from Australia, where few, if any, beaches are private, and all of them are probably more gorgeous than those on Martha’s Vineyard, the depths to which the rich in our country will go to get away from the rest of us stings and saddens me. This is a function of less stratification of wealth in Australia (less super-rich people), but more importantly, fewer people in general. With 1/10th the people in the same land mass as the United States, it’s much easier to get away from everyone else. But the 400,000 dollar beach doesn’t just allow rich people to get away, it lets them get away and hang out with only each other.

Of course, everyone in America wants to be one of these superrich, even if there is no chance of most of us getting there. This is why rich brats get reality shows. I am by no means innocent of thoughts of greed. I play the lottery hoping I’ll win 30 million and never have to work in my life. But I won’t win, and I’ll probably never be worth 30 million dollars. I still might be able to get away with not working however.

But whatever. Those wankers on the Vineyard can keep their damn beach and be free of scrubs like me. But I wish the mass of people who don’t have 400,000 dollars, who work hard to put food on the table, could wake up and recognize our society would benefit from a structure of government and economic redistribution that served the needs of the many, not the powerful. And moreover, I wish that the people paying 400,000 dollars would realize that they could do much more good donating 200 grand to charity, with plenty left over for a plane ticket to Sydney. Where they could see some damn beautiful beaches without having to pay a cent.