When elephants fight, goes an old saying, it is the grass that suffers. When Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg – with a combined wealth of 245 billion dollars – get into the cage for an ego-humbling fight, we know who the elephants are. But the grass? That’s a more difficult question to answer.
Is this what billionaires do when they get bored? What happens next? Does the winner take on Jeff Bezos or Mukesh Ambani, No. 3 and No. 9 respectively on the Forbes rich list? Or will there be a strategic ‘draw’ leaving egos uncrushed and stock markets unaffected? That would be deeply unsatisfactory, even if the fighters’ families might not agree. Perhaps this could become an international event open only to billionaires. Bill Gates versus Warren Buffet anybody?
When I started writing this column, the fight was to be in Las Vegas. Now it will be at the Coliseum in Rome. By the time you get to read this, the venue might have shifted to the cricket stadium in Ahmedabad. Or it might have been called off by the respective parents – like parents of spoilt brats do everywhere.
