Morgan Monkeys

Having resolved that this week's article will be about the sale of Trade Me to Fairfax, I mused over what would be appropriate background reading.
I might read a life of Captain Morgan, the eighteenth-century English pirate. I could also read Christopher Marlowe's Tamurlame.

I quickly concluded neither would give me any insights for my article. All I could finally think of was the first chapter in A.C. Clarke's novel 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Captain Morgan and Tamurlame certainly crushed their environments. But they were also brave charismatic men who ruled by inspiring devotion among their followers.

As regards father Gareth and son Sam Morgan, they have made flesh Margaret Thatcher's 1979 victory campaign slogan,

There is no society – only individuals and their families.

I t is a tempting and ironical thought that Toynbee's theory can be applied to the entire human species.That there is finally one circular human history. It began with grunting ape-men hopping about in a primal landscape. It ends with ape-men in an urban wasteland speaking only jerkisms.

Of course, as Toynbee explained, after barbarism and archaism there is a new, invigorated civilisation. The barbarian invaders learn the manners of their conquered lands and found new ruling dynasties. The bootlegger Joe Kennedy sent his two eldest sons to Oxford to be educated by the Marxist economist and intellectual heavyweight, Professor Laski.

But at end time the children of old successful pirates are never wiser, only more mercurial and cunning.

Gareth himself last year took a motorbike ride that retraced the thirteenth-century conquests of the Tartars. He got to Karkhorim, the original Mongol capital in the Gobi desert. There he mused to Radio New Zealand his world viewpoint confirmed by his travels. In India, said Gareth, the men sit on their arses all day and talk politics. So nothing gets done. In China, they work all day and a great new modern nation is being built.

While in China at the same time as my exact contemporary Gareth, I had watched a hive of workmen at a building site. Something did not seem right. They actually seemed more insect than human. So I focused on one worker in the centre of the site. I quickly noticed he was aimlessly picking up and putting down objects all day. He was therefore, in his practical use, inferior to an insect. But I suspect – in Gareth's eyes – still superior to a political thinker.

In the meanwhile the Morgans revel in their shakedown of seven hundred million dollars. I heard a brief announcement that it is feared it will disturb the Wellington economy. It was reported when a female Herald reporter went to interview Gareth, she could only contact him in the spa. When she tried to speak to him, he just laughed and laughed. She could have asked him, how long does he estimate it will take for Fairfax to make a profit from its purchase of Trade Me?

How does a trade exchange company that operates from a room in a warehouse have a monetary value seven hundred times more than a generous commonsense estimate? Even that, I suspect, is ten times too much – but after all the Morgans are money-wizards.

The whole point about an online trade exchange is there is no real owner, only buyers and sellers. In the global market, dot com companies have become found out as bubbles of hot air and free-floating capital. Are you sure it wasn't the old-boy network of insider trading and futures market? Did some of that seven hundred million end up in the bank accounts of Fairfax directors? Are you sure that even Trade Me is not now archaic and soon to be redundant? But Gareth just laughed and laughed.

After they came for the Holocaust deniers they might come for the "free market" deniers because they hurt the Morgans' feelings and disturbed their tranquillity to swallow nations' hard-earned capital.

Gareth now quite humorously describes himself as "Papa on the porch". His evangelical economics he doesn't seem to preach anymore. He used to devote huge outlays of time and energy convincing himself that Prime Ministers don't matter now. I always got the feeling he never entirely succeeded. He does have a University doctorate – although it is only business studies. I never hear that argument from anyone now that Tony Blair single-handedly started a British invasion of a foreign country and Helen Clark brought her country a measure of tranquillity and general prosperity. Gareth Morgan so far just laughs and laughs.

updated 2010

Gareth Morgan announced he would donate his share of the sale to charity.