A Facebook Fantasy

My entire family, including my five-month-old granddaughter and , has Facebook accounts. So does . Only Casey our cat, who is pretty solitary anyhow, is Facebookless. Molly and I rarely look at our own accounts, nevermind anybody else’s. In these days of social networking, that may strike you as strange. All I can says is that the sanest man I know, my 87-year-old , doesn’t even have a computer, nevermind a Facebook account.

Walt used to own a computer until he figured out that if someone wanted him to know something, or send him a greeting, he or she could darn well write using snail mail, or call him on his one and only telephone (land line, of course) or knock on his door. He thereby saved the cost of an Internet line and a zillion in computer repairs. If Walt wants to know something, he can and does read about it. It is not that Walt and I are fuddy-duddies. Rather we think it right to be close to other people, but not too close. I don’t need pictures of the chipmunks who bedevil Walt’s lawn. He doesn’t need information about my going shopping. We are an odd couple, I guess.

This comes to mind for two reasons. First, Mark Zuckerberg, the found of Facebook, is now worth between $16 and $17 billion (with a “b”) dollars as a result of a public offering of Facebook stock last week. (The exact amount is hard to know, given the apparent hanky panky involving the offering, although far be it for me to say that it was Z’s fault.) 

Second, the next day he married his principal squeeze for the last nine years, Priscilla Chan. Ms. Chan is no mere bimbo. She was a medical student who met Zuckerberg at Harvard, where he was fiddling with the Facebook idea. By the time she married, she was a graduate of Stanford Medical School who had obtained a nice residency in pediatrics. It could be expected that Ms. Chan would have at least a comfortable career in medicine, although because of the marriage timing she missed by one day getting a share of the Zuckerberg billions. (There may, of course, be a prenuptial agreement that changes some of that, but it has yet to surface, if it exists at all.) Not to worry.

The question is: What will Mr. Z do with his new billions? The answer is, I have no idea. Instead, I give you the benefit of my daydreaming about what would happen if suddenly some company like Bain Capital financed the development of the whatsit I invented 30 years ago as a new dot-com company and it made me a mere billionaire.

The moment I got the billion dollar call from my accountant, I would tell my wife to do what she wanted in the house. You know, replace the furniture, have the windows washed, repaint as she deems necessary, fix the knobs on the kitchen cabinets, and have the dog washed and groomed once a week. OK, she could also hire a full-time housekeeper so we would never have another argument about loading or unloading the dishes into or from the dishwasher. Also expected is that she will make some landscaping service rich , putting in plantings to give us , and controlling the flooding that occurs a few times a year along the Saucon Creek. Nothing ostentatious, you know; Sue doesn’t believe in show.

We already have a nice Prius which we enjoy, but I think I would spring for a two seat Scion so I could toddle around Hellertown with the dog without worrying about Sue’s schedule or parking problems. Also, I guess I would open accounts at Melt and Shula’s steakhouse. We like the food at both, although they have always been out of our price range. Finally, still on food, I would get in touch with Mae and Alex at Asia and finance their move to Hellertown and support whatever other expansion they wish to make. What is a billion dollars unless you can have a great Chinese restaurant nearby able to deliver to your door step? Maybe then they will stop requiring me to give my phone number when placing an order.

Next, family. This is a tough one. Do you distribute money on the basis of need or on the basis of equity? It has always seemed to me unfair to omit some family member on the ground that he or she has made enough money on their own. Accordingly, I would immediately donate $5 million to each family member down to the level of grandnephews, my cousin David and my niece-in-law. The money going to minors would be placed in trust for their college education. I hope $5 million is enough by the time they graduate.

What I’ve described would barely wrinkle the sleeve on a billion dollars so there would be lots of room for charities. Charity, I’m told, begins at home, so the and Bethlehem libraries would be in for a few bucks. I’d over tip the mail lady, pay for and establish the Katz Profligate Fund to help hire more teachers, keep class sizes down and seize by eminent domain the land across Polk Valley Road to provide room for the practically inevitable expansion of the district’s buildings. (Once again, school board member Bryan Eichfeld, eminent domain is permitted by the U.S. Constitution.) Also, I would provide enough money to save the fine tradition of Saucon Fine Arts which , if not in the theater.

On a wider front, I would make large contributions to the Salvation Army. Ever since I read Vachel Lindsey’s wonderful poem General William Booth Enters into Heaven (“BOOTH entered loudly with a big bass drum. Are you washed in the Blood of the Lamb?”) the selflessness of the Salvation Army has appealed to me. It is somehow always there when it is needed, and although I don’t agree with its religious point of view, one should not look a gift horse in the mouth. Also, I would like to repay my obligation to the Boy Scouts for turning an idle youth into a first-rate camper, swimmer, and leader of men--OK, boys. probably don’t need my help because they make out like beautiful bandits . And, obviously and unfortunately, I was never a member of the Girl Scouts.

Ah, I have left out politics. Fear not, for most of the remainder of my fortune would go toward establishing a political action committee (PAC) to be called Citizens for a Rational America. Not only would this PAC wipe the floor and the airwaves of foolish attacks on the present administration, it would seek to reverse the current economic system by ensuring that the 1% are taxed up to their gazoos while we 99-percenters dine out at expensive restaurants on food stamps. I may be the only citizen in the PAC, but what the hell--that is often the case. Moreover, it is my money and I am entitled to the freedom to blacken anybody’s name I wish to blacken.

You know what the good news is? I’ll never persuade Mitt’s Bain Capital to take up my cause.