I don’t know what goes on in the mind of a billionaire. Obviously. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t be writing this, offering it up to you ingrates for free. If I knew what went on in the mind of billionaires, I’d be one myself, I imagine. Or I’d be writing How To books about How to Become a Billionaire, making maybe not billions but some serious scratch.

Not knowing the inner workings of the mind of a billionaire only leaves guesswork as to what makes the species tick. What motivates them. What gets them up in the mornings. (Probably more, Who gets them up in the mornings. A butler, in all likelihood. One of those lady’s-in-waiting for the gal billionaires. A Reginald for him. A Mrs. Bronwin for her.)

To amass that amount of wealth, I figure you have to pretty much have a one-track mind. Money, money, money. Money, money, money, money. There’s little room left over for things like empathy, compassion, love. Hobbies. What sort of hobbies do billionaires have that don’t include just buying stuff? I’m talking inquisitiveness not acquisitiveness. An interest in something other than just money, money, money, and all the emotions and sensations of accumulating as much of it as humanly possible. Guile. Hate. A touch of sociopathy for sure. Antipathy toward everyone. Everyone. No exceptions because, in the end, everyone is nothing more than a mark, a target, an entity of little interest to you aside from their pecuniary value. Chattels to be bought and sold.

Nothing personal in there. Just business. All business.

I’m wondering about all this because of the rumours making the rounds about Jeff Bezos wanting to buy the Condé Nast empire, specifically Vogue magazine, as a wedding present for his new bride, Not Mackenzie Whoever She Is. As if a $50 million nuptial bash and the renting of Venice for the weekend wasn’t enough of a gift. Hey! The woman married Jeff Bezos. Can you put a price tag on that kind of sacrifice?

Although Bezos denies the rumours and the current Condé Nast owners, Newhouse Advance Publications, are likewise saying Uh Uh, there are signs something may brewing. The long time Vogue honcho, Anna Wintour, who has some equity skin in the Vogue game, has recently stepped down from her honcho position but not before putting the latest Mrs. Bezos on the digital cover of the magazine. The Vogue building in Ol’ Blighty has been sold in a sign the magazine’s being slimmed down for sale.

All, according to my sources at the Daily Mail.

Ho Hum.

Whatever.

Billionaires gonna billionaire.

We get Bezos’s move here. Keep his wife happy with the Vogue while also, let’s not lose sight of this one, tucking a few other titles into his back pocket with the possible purchase. Condé Nast’s stable include names like GQ, The New Yorker, Wired and Teen Vogue, the latter two have been among the harshest critics of the current administration occupying the White House and the billionaires lavishly supporting it. So maybe not just a wedding present for the Mrs. More of a His & Hers for the couple who have literally everything.

Remember what Bezos has been doing over at the Washington Post, the paper he scooped up back in 2013, specifically the last 18 months or so. No presidential editorial endorsement last year. The ‘refocusing’ of the opinion pages to less Trump antagonistic topics like the ‘free market’ and ‘individual freedom’. The suppressing of a political cartoon, critical of the newspaper’s billionaire owner, submitted by a fucking Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist, Ann Telnaes.

“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations,” Telnaes wrote in her resignation letter back in January, “and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”

Again.

Ho hum.

Billionaires gonna billionaire.

What I find intriguing in all this, though, is the motivation of the current owners of Condé Nast, the Newhouse family, to sell. Billionaires themselves, Advance Publications, the parent company, is privately owned, with little external shareholder pressure to always be upping the bottom line. So a sale would be some sort of strategic move, I guess? The company is a multimedia conglomerate beyond just magazines, with ownership interests in TV, internet services and sites like Reddit. Condé Nast is simply a subsidiary, the most glamorous subsidiary perhaps, but still, one facet of a multifaceted corporation.

A corporation, though, founded on newspapers, on journalism. The Staten Island Advance, in fact, the controlling interest of which was purchased in 1922 by Sam Newhouse. His grandson is the current president of the company. Advance Publications could be considered a legacy enterprise with the original founder’s name still attached to the daily business.

Too sappy a reason not to sell a piece? After all, Condé Nast was only purchased by Advance in 1959, the story goes, and get this, by Sam Sr. as an anniversary gift for his wife, Mitzi, who loved Vogue. Sound familiar? A certain, I don’t know, serendipity in selling it to Bezos for his newly betrothed.

Not to mention the oodles and oodles of billions that the company will surely garner from Bezos for the transaction.

Which brings me to my point.

How many oodles and oodles of billions does any company require? Any family? According to a Forbes profile last year, the Newhouse family is worth $24+ billion. While no Jeff Bezos, that would still be considered by some as multigenerational megawealth. Is it just a case that enough is never enough for some people?

Maybe, the Newhouses believe that the magazine business is a dying business. There’s plenty of evidence to indicate that may be the case. In their mind, they’ve got a willing, besotted dupe to unload a dud on. Just business to them. Personal for Bezos.

With a big infusion of cash, they’ll take their company in another direction, a more modern, updated direction. Magazines were for their grandpa. The internetz where it’s at now. The Tik Toks and the AI. Adapt or die.

Attachment to anything, to a thing, to an object, to a product, to the past, to anything other than money is for suckers. That’s rule #1 in How you become a billionaire, I guess. How you remain a billionaire. Money and wealth is all that matters.

If Jeff Bezos comes up with the right number, what’s it matter to the Newhouse family his reasons for doing so? If he wants to give Vogue to his wife and then crater the publications he finds troublesome like what he’s doing with the Post, what business is it of the Newhouses? That’s his business, not theirs.

And in the minds of billionaires, it’s just business. Everything else is beside the point.