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You are powerful because you _have to_ pay a _former_ president to be at your venue? It screams the opposite, actually. Because if you were really powerful you
by pi-e-sigma 3y ago
You are powerful because you _have to_ pay a _former_ president to be at your venue? It screams the opposite, actually. Because if you were really powerful you wouldn't need to pay for that. And it would be a sitting president, not the former one with no actual power anymore.
- phatfish 3y agoThere is nothing special about most rich/powerful people (there are those that are genuinely exceptional of course and built a fortune because of that), they want the same things as "normal" people just on a different level. Why does some generic reality TV celebrity or "influencer" make money from showing up at a party or turning on some Xmas lights? Surely no one really cares, there are 1000s of reality TV stars. But, it turns out some people do care, so cookie-cutter reality TV celebrity gets paid to turn up. In "high net worth" (for want of a better term) social circles ex-Presidents are the reality TV celebrities, and the people who want them to turn up are rich, so they get paid a lot for the equivalent of turning on the Xmas lights. I suspect its not really about the speech, it's about having them in the same room and giving your guests the chance at a face-to-face meeting. Of course Obama may be more discerning with which events he attends, but the demand for people like him to turn up is certainly real.
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoIf you are handsome you don't need to pay chicks cash for them to shop up to the dinner. Analogously if you have a close relation with a president that you could use to your advantage you don't have to pay him to show up. And if you have to pay him to show up how much of a real influence do you really have over him? How difficult is it to understand such a simple concept?