How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don't

"How to Have Something Most Billionaires Don't" is the title given in If This Isn't Nice, What Is? to a commencement address given at Rice University in Houston, Texas on October 12, 2001.

Summary

Quad, Rice University

In view of how much time and money went into receiving their diplomas, Vonnegut thanks the graduates for bothering to become informed and reasonable adults, which makes the world a better place. Although he has never met them, he sees them all as Adam and Eve, about to be kicked out of Eden after gaining knowledge. As an erstwhile Adam, now a Methuselah, Vonnegut passes on what another Methuselah, Joseph Heller, said to him at a party held by a multi-billionaire on Long Island. Although not nearly as wealthy, Heller said he possessed something their host would never have: "The knowledge that I have enough".

Alfred Nobel

Hopefully this will be a comfort since almost all the graduates will feel like failures at some point in the future for not becoming billionaires. Vonnegut is often asked by "[w]ell-dressed people... with their teeth bared" if he believes in the redistribution of wealth. He replies that it's already being constantly redistributed, often in insane ways. For one hundred years the Nobel Prize was a financial reward, funded by the inventor of dynamite, for making a meaningful contribution to world so they could be independently wealthy and not be inhibited from further work by the powerful. The prize now stands at one million dollars, a fraction of what is made by many corporate executives, many entertainers, and sports figures.

A college education, while much less than a million dollars, is nonetheless a major expense for most Americans and they rarely lead to extensive wealth. Most graduates are only of use locally and gain "modest amounts of money or fame" if not outright ingratitude. There should be no shame in this, because "communities are all that's substantial about the world". Modern generations can now join a community anywhere on the planet. Mark Twain, who never received a Nobel, once said everyone lived for the "good opinion of our neighbors", the people we know, see, and talk to. To do this, graduates should use the skills they learned in college while acting honorably and decently, following the example of "exemplary books and elders".