Toronto, April 20, 2025
Nepo parents
You’ve probably heard of nepo babies. A nepo baby is someone whose success is allegedly due to their parents' connections and cash rather than their own talent or hard work. (“Nepo” is short for “nepotism”).
Watching the streaming mega-hit The White Lotus got me thinking about nepo babies. Patrick Schwarzenegger stars in the third season of Lotus. Patrick is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son. (I have to say I thought Patrick was pretty good. He’s obviously able to stand on his own two Schwarzenegger feet.)
How about nepo parents, whose success and affluence is due, at least in part, to their child’s connections and cash? Just like the Reversing Falls in St. John, New Brunswick, the river of connections and cash can run in two directions. Will Patrick ever prop up Arnold?
The other day I was reading about Elon Musk’s mother. The New York Times reported, “Maye Musk, a model and a public speaker, recently headlined a government conference in Dubai and endorsed a slew of products in China.” Maye Musk travels all over the globe, promoting this and that (mostly Maye). I hope it’s not too cynical to suggest that the fact her son is the richest man in the world is part of her international allure. And you can bet Musk’s mum doesn’t, as rich people put it, “fly commercial,” and that she is surrounded by security guards wherever she goes. It wouldn’t be surprising if her son picks up most of the tab for the private jets, protection, and suites in five star hotels.
Bill Gates has often talked about the family dinners presided over for decades by his father, Bill Gates Sr. I wonder if Bill Sr. ever looked around the dinner table mid-meal and said to himself, with a touch of surprise: “There’s my boy Billy. He’s one of the richest men in the world!”
Bill Sr., a successful Seattle lawyer, didn’t die a particularly rich man himself, but for years was co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This gave him a great deal of influence. The New York Times reported that he “managed the foundation day to day, conferring with its executives and philanthropic experts, sending his son lists of proposed grants, writing checks and shaping the charity’s major goals: improving health and education and alleviating poverty in America and the third world.” Bill Sr. told the Seattle Rotary Club in 2005, “I never imagined that the argumentative young boy who grew up in my house, eating my food and using my name, would be my future employer.”
But the nepo parents story is not always a happy one. Sam Bankman-Fried, the dethroned and disgraced crypto-king, is now in jail, convicted in 2023 of fraud, but once he was a billionaire. His parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, long-time and respected professors at Stanford Law School, became closely involved with the management of FTX, Sam’s company. In 2021, Bankman took a leave of absence from Stanford Law to work full time at FTX. NPR reported: “After Bankman expressed dissatisfaction with his $200,000 FTX salary, his son wired a $10 million cash gift to his parents...” During the heyday of FTX, Joseph and Barbara vacationed in a $16.4 million house in The Bahamas. Now, deeply unhappy one-time nepo parents, they are trying to get a presidential pardon for Sam and are being pursued by the FTX trustee in bankruptcy. (See the NPR Newsletter of October 3, 2023, “It's not just FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried. His parents also face legal trouble.”)
Very few of us are blessed with parents or children with enough cash and connections to turn us into nepo babies or nepo parents. That’s a good thing.
I see the rich as freaks. Their lives are empty, strange, and disconnected from reality. They are never satisfied and always searching for the next thing to fill the giant hole in their souls. If they only realized how much better it is to be an average person. We have peace, real friendships, community, contentment, and know how to enjoy the truly meaningful things of life. Poor rich people. 😥
A lot of name dropping here,especially Gates and. Schwarzenegger and oh yes Musk
Good grief Charlie Brown