Billionaire boom

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If Moses, after spending 40 days and nights with the Almighty, had come down from Mount Sinai today bearing two tablets with the Ten Commandments, he would have been hard pressed to find a publisher.

The pornographic movie business rakes in yearly more than Hollywood ($12 billion vs. $10 billion). "Zoo," not a pornographic movie, according to director Robinson Devor, pushes the envelope of today's latest norms by breaking down "the last taboo on the boundary of something comprehensible." It's sex between men and animals.

"Spring Awakening" is Broadway's latest hit musical, hailed by reviewers as "tastefully erotic" and "a straight shot of eroticism." Its sex scenes range from masturbation and sadomasochism to abortion, homosexuality and abuse.

Television and mobile phones have pornified the Western world's popular culture at an alarming rate, making sex more violent. An Internet search for "sex + toy + torture" yielded results by the thousands.

Beginning in the raunchy, anything-goes 1960s, the Ten Commandments quickly became multiple choice. Coveting something that belongs to another is now de rigueur. "Filthy Lucre for Dummies" would be a good title to chronicle the repeal of the Eighth (thou shall not steal) and 10th (thou shall not covet thy neighbor's anything) commandments when communism was consigned to history's oubliette.

Robert Kiyosaki's "Retire Young, Retire Rich" is now must reading for aspirant billionaires. It took John D. Rockefeller 16 years to become a billionaire. Bill Gates did it in 10. Mike Dell in five. And Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page became multibillionaires in their late 20s.

The collective worth of the world's 700-odd billionaires is now bumping $3 trillion. Their numbers grow by more than 100 new big ones a year. Some 50 countries now have them, including Kazakhstan and Iceland. In China, where the rule of business law is as ephemeral in the Wild East as it once was in the Wild West (as long as you keep your nose out of politics), there are already 30 billionaires.

Some make their billions so fast, one new member came in at $5 billion, another at $9 billion, all racked up in a year. Bill Gates still leads the pack with almost $50 billion (and has pledged $30 billion alongside second-wealthiest Warren Buffett's $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce poverty, disease and premature death in the developing world).

In the mine-is-bigger-than-yours mega-yacht race, Russian oil tycoon Roman Abramovich, 40, the world's 11th richest billionaire at $18.2 billion, is in the lead with a $330 million, 525-footer -- the 40 knot "Eclipse" -- that has a 40-member crew, 22 staterooms, a swimming pool, two helipads, a private submarine, and bulletproof glass. Annual running costs: $20 million, including $120,000 to refuel. He owns three other giant boats in the plus 300-foot class for his friends to tag along and recently gave a 370-footer to a friend.

The dizzying climb of the entrepreneurs has led some corporate CEOs to believe they can crash the club by leveraging gluttonous severance packages -- e.g., Home Depot's Robert Nardelli dumped by his board with a $210 million golden handshake. The Economist, in this week's cover story on executive pay and the "glory days of global capitalism," says the executive movers and shakers about to meet at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland have enjoyed a "Beckhamesque bonanza."