A cursory glance at the Jeffrey Epstein’s biography (1953 – 2019) shows it can be treated as a modern adaptation (and so adjustment) of Horatio Alger Jr.’s framework: Epstein’s life moves from (lower) middle-class respectability to incredible wealth and luxury (and associated criminal sordidness). Epstein was an immensely successful social climber, who didn’t just manage the wealth of the ultra-wealthy, but also used his own wealth and his access to the very wealthy to position himself into the role of Macher in politics and (unusually) in science, including non-trivial associations with (inter alia) MIT’s Media Lab, Harvard University’s evolutionary dynamics programs, and the Santa-Fe institute.*
The latter is especially notable because while as a kid Epstein skipped two grades, he was de facto an academic drop-out. Yet, back in 2002 already, an incredibly instructive New York Magazine profile by Landon Thomas Jr. reports:
Investing in people doesn’t mean providing them with an education. Rather, Epstein brought people together from business, science, and politics which allowed them access to funds, prestige, political decision-makers, Hollywood stars, media moguls, and young girls. While Epstein donated money, his real gift to others was that he facilitated other people’s plans by brokering one of the most scarce commodities in science and politics, attention. His perceived success at this kind of brokerage is my main interest below. (Here I use ‘brokerage’ and its cognates in order to refer to his role as enabler.)
But it would be remiss of me to fail to mention that in return for facilitating attention and funds Epstein got investment opportunities — including investment in scientific projects he cared about not the least ones associated with eugenics and transhumanism — and sexual access to children. He was, in fact, convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. And there is very little doubt that the plea bargain only covered a small number of his life of sex crimes before and after the conviction.
Of course, part of the interest in documentation pertaining to Epstein’s life is to what degree and to whom he also brokered or trafficked in sexual access to children to people in his circle, and whether that allowed for opportunities for further financial gain (through payoffs or blackmail, etc.) I assume my readers are familiar with these sordid facts. They matter a great deal for the continued public interest in the handling of the case, but I will only emphasize them intermittently below.