“You
cannot protect wealth from succeeding generations” --- from The Quotations of Chairman Joe
As
the miserable record of ‘ol Two-Cows’ suggests, succeeding generations wither
in the shadows of greatness. In biology
it is a general rule of thumb that succeeding generations revert to the
mean. It is not logical to expect then
that the sons of accomplishment will ever rise to the level of their fathers, a
principle revealed with terrifying clarity as the Boomers took the seats of
their forebears. There are exceptions to
every rule, of course, the Bach family leaps immediately to mind but, alas, the
exceptions prove the rule. When I first proposed
this maxim on the internet in 2000 arguing that the snot-nosed son of wealth
and power would, in the end, make his father look like Marcus Aurelius, I was
immediately ridiculed by one wag who raised the example of Barry Bonds. Alas, steroids have demonstrated my point for
old W was all hat an no cows. The point still stands.
What
is true in politics is also true in other facets of life.
Ted Turner is a notable exception but I think
we can rest secure knowing that he represents, in that family, the pinnacle of
achievement.
Like the Rockefellers, Fords,
and others, the offspring of Bill Gates and Ted Turner will in all likelihood
not be the captains of capitalist achievement that was their father.
And
so it is on a much smaller scale. I
spent over a decade in Athens, Georgia working with several property management
companies. Two such companies were the
results of inherited wealth, and both very dysfunctional. In a college town, a town
in which the demand for rental housing is exceedingly high and every
opportunity for success presents itself, both of these operations were working
their dead level best to parrot William Clay Ford and become the Detroit Lions
of the rental industry.
Both
companies were characterized by bed-rock conservatism. One of the proprietors of the first obtained
the company through inherited wealth, following a business model in which
maintenance was shoddy and infrequent, and the work of contractors
substandard. The other Company was
directly inherited. While the
maintenance standards were much higher, the ethic was nonetheless as basely
conservative.
Both
companies were, in spite of the prevailing contempt for the ‘welfare state’
sucking off the public teat. In the
first, the most significant single client was the University of Georgia which
leased a huge office space for its testing center. In both cases the companies were hugely
dependent on student subsidies, federal grants and loans in which students,
unless they are at school on daddy’s credit card, pay their rents.
In
the second example, however, conservatism took a more familiar form. Drew would say to me that his goal was to be ‘debt
free’. Inheriting a sizeable debt as
well as the operations from his father, he vowed to rid both himself and
the company of debt. Reading the ‘Drudge
Report’ and other ranting’s of the paranoid, psychotic conspiracy freaks; Drew
was convinced that the sword of Damocles hung directly overhead. It was sort of
an economic survivalist mentality, bordering on an a personal form of the
ideological imperative. He would soon be
debt-free, he would say, ensuring that the company would become rock-solid, impervious
to change. I had heard tale before,
visions of the Good Ship Butterfield slowly sliding into Davey Jones’ locker
danced before my eyes.
Drew
inherited several properties, including an apartment complex and a large office
building. When I first began my work,
the apartment complex was full. But time
waits for no man, as the old adage goes, and time certainly does not wait for
routine maintenance. Over the years, the
buildings had begun to deteriorate, especially the office building. One of my first recollections was a few
vacancies on the upper floor of the two floor structure. It had been vacant for nearly a year when I
arrived and, in time, I began to understand why. The roof leaked. The structure had a flat roof which was easily
over half a century old. It had been
patched many times. When it rained hard, and it rains hard often in subtropical
Georgia, the downspouts, located on only one side of the building, are quickly
overwhelmed resulting in the pooling of several inches of water. Water, as you know, finds its own level, and
will soon seek a path downward and any weaknesses in the structure will soon be
discovered. Accordingly, with every
significant rainfall, we would be spending our day cleaning up the mess. Sometimes these were considerable with desks
and records destroyed. The inexorable
effect of all this was soon apparent.
Moreover
the structure suffered from lack of routing replacement of old and rusting air
conditioning equipment. Rust from the “A”
coils in the air conditioning would soon fill up the pans and drains where the
condensate, in the form of water dripping off these coils, would collect resulting
in leaks in the office ceilings.
Repeated efforts to clear the drains were always the response, but no
monies were to be borrowed to repair either the cooling systems or the
roof. The result was predictable. When I left, some two years later, the
building was nearly 50 per cent vacant.
“I can’t give it away on 7th
avenue….” --- The Rolling Stones
“Shattered”
Recognizing the stench of death, I moved
on. I had been here before, de ja vu all
over again.
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