People have been talking about
a plan to build the most expensive spec house in history in the
exclusive Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Mont. The ski resort-home
will boast 53,000 square feet of living space, larger than the new
public library in Bozeman. It will have a heated driveway, an
enclosed chairlift for direct access to the nearby slopes, and cost
some $155 million. Buyers are not expected to require a bank loan.
After all, you need to be a millionaire just to ante up at the gate
to this high-toned subdivision.
Mind you, there are
already dozens of opulent homes in the Yellowstone Club and
elsewhere around my quality-of-life state. My wife has been working
in them of late. She’s picked up part-time work with a
cleaning outfit that spiffs up homes after construction in
anticipation of the new owners. It’s menial work. It’s,
well, kind of disgusting to get pulled into the vortex of excess.
It also pays significantly more per hour than her other
job, working with children in the public schools.
Regularly she comes home shaking her head. Once she worked all day,
an eight-hour shift, cleaning a single bathroom. She reports that
she is only one of many workers devoted to each of these homes,
shelters that will be occupied, in many cases, only a couple of
weeks every year.
There are construction crews, of
course, and the usual subcontractors of electricians, plumbers,
roofers. But these places require whole teams to wire and install
entertainment paraphernalia — televisions, satellites, computers,
movie screens, sound systems, security. There are interior
decorators who fly in from New York to pick out furniture and
carpets and curtains. You know the stuff — heavy pine chairs, deer
antler lamps, leather upholstery. Western cliché. There are
“detail” teams who buy everything from hand towels to
soap to food in the fridge. There are cooks and maids and butlers
and drivers and landscapers and technicians of every stripe, busy
as bees preparing the lair for the queen.
The argument
has been made that this pyramid of employment is good for the
economy. All these people wouldn’t make enough money
otherwise. They’d all have to figure out another way to
support themselves, or go elsewhere, or live on less.
Why, some ask, can’t these rich people spend their money on
something more redeeming, more charitable? It turns out that in
most cases, they do that, too. Not only can they live in
unbelievable luxury, but they have enough money to be philanthropic
to boot.
I wonder, though . . . just because a person can
buy a $155 million mansion, and still assuage social guilt with
philanthropy, and be an art patron and a world traveler and a
political player too, does that mean it’s OK? Maybe someone
can afford it, and support the local economy, my economy, in the
bargain, but at what price? Once that big house is built high in
the mountains at the base of a ski resort, a chunk of what was once
wild and dramatic land, there for all, including, presumably, some
wildlife, vanishes. Even if you or I could get past the front
gates, the country isn’t there any more.
Then
there’s the matter of the resources squandered in the
building and maintenance of structures such as this. We all consume
to live. But in a place like this the scale is stunning. A Bozeman
resident calculated that the propane required each year by this one
dwelling, and its heated driveway, would power 500 average homes.
One begins to wonder if this opulence is ethically supportable. In
what way is it justifiable?
Now that’s been fun,
hasn’t it? These behemoth structures are easy to vilify, with
their covered heliports, indoor gyms, bathrooms the size of my
house. So very over the top. Problem is, by pointing fingers at
these bloated shelters, we wriggle away from confronting our own
contributions to the problem. Could we do away with one of our
cars? Do we really need the extra bedroom or remodeled kitchen? Is
it necessary to drive to every kid’s soccer game on every
weekend? Did we remember the canvas bags on the last trip to the
grocery store? No, most of us won’t be lining up to bid on
the $155 million super-mansion, but what else are we queuing up
for?
Alan Kesselheim is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He is a writer in Bozeman,
Montana.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
