There is something of the Hogarthian morality tale about the stories of New Yorker writer Evan Osnos from the sundeck, The Haves and Have-Yachts.
This series of essays on the bizarre lifestyles of the plutocrats, financiers and tech bros who are thriving in our present era starts with the glittering status symbols that give the book its title.
He describes in wonderfully salacious detail how Riviera mansions, Van Goghs and private jets just do not cut it any more for the Succession classes. Only these gaudy floating palaces “the length of a football field” will do.
As Osnos wryly observes, a gigayacht — defined as a private boat more than 295ft in length — “is the most expensive item that our species has figured out how to own”.
But even in the glitz there is darkness. As Osnos observes, yacht ownership does not seem to bring lasting happiness or satisfaction, only, in many cases envy, anxiety, even the occasional pang of guilt.
He details how one veteran superyacht captain, Brendan O’Shannassy, was told by his employer to give him a tour of the boats moored in Sardinia. Eventually his boss cut it short saying “there was a time when my yacht was the most beautiful in the bay. How do I keep up with this new money?”
As one anonymously quoted boat guest puts it, “You have a chef and I have a chef. You have a driver and I have a driver. You can fly privately and I can fly privately. So the one place where I can make it clear to the world I’m in a different f***ing category than you is the boat.”
At times the detail is overwhelming, an almost nausea-inducing banquet of opulence without end. There are the yachts with onboard IMAX theatres, or equipped with hospital equipment “that tests for dozens of pathogens”, even ski rooms “where guests can suit up for a helicopter trip to a mountaintop”.
Doomsday preppers
The first half of the book explores, essay by essay, the other insanely extravagant ways in which the global elite splurge their surplus capital. We meet the billionaire Doomsday preppers in a permanent state of fear about the “little people” turning up at their gates with pitchforks and burning torches who are prepared to spend big on luxury underground bunkers or safe-haven homes in New Zealand.
In one of the book’s most memorable passages a group of “centimillionaires and a couple of billionaires” are discussing their escape plans when the balloon goes up.
Most said they’ll “fire up their planes and take their families to Western ranches or homes in other countries”. But as one guest pointed out: “Are you taking your pilot’s family too? And what about the maintenance guys? If the revolutionaries are kicking in the doors, how many of the people in your life will you have to take with you?”
Riviera mansions, Van Goghs and private jets just do not cut it any more for the Succession classes
Then there are the music stars hired for “a private” for short sets plus a “meet and greet” (involving a “photo and some effortful bonhomie”) costing anything up to $1 million a pop — and in some cases far more. Incredibly, the Eagles are said to have been paid $6 million by an unnamed New York client just for a single performance of Hotel California.
Ponzi pretenders
And while such “privates” were once seen as a shameful sell-out, now artists are clamouring to get a slice of the pie at a time when earnings from recordings sales have tanked.
But for everyone who makes it into the gilded but nervous club, there are hundreds who fail or fall by the wayside.
The last section of the book, called The Perils, focuses on the desperate stories of the “wobbling pillars of late capitalism” who used Ponzi schemes and fraud to try to catapult themselves up the wealth scale into the yacht-owning classes.
But like Hogarth’s fallen Rake, the end game can only be humiliation and destitution.
Jonathan Prynn is Business Editor at The London Standard
The Haves and Have-Yachts by Evan Osnos is out now (Simon & Schuster, £22)
