Once upon a time there was a boy who an
idea. He took his tiny little house and let everyone who wanted come
over and party. They brought the food, the drink and entertainment
and he provided the house.
After a while they even began to help
him build more rooms onto the house. They would tell him what needed
fixing in the house and even let him spy on everything they looked at
and bought just to be able to go to the party.
He got big companies to provide
entertainment for the big party that was going on all the time. He
let the people even come with their little businesses and everyone
thought it was so great they built even bigger rooms and a bigger
house for him. They spent hundred of hours building special rooms in
his house that anyone could party in just to show off their work. It
reached the point that when anyone met anyone, instead of even
exchanging phone numbers or inviting them over for coffee or tea,
they just told them to meet them at his house. They let their own
houses start to fall apart because they really didn't need them any
more. They had a nice bright shiny house to party at and they invited
everyone, everywhere to come and party with them.
They didn't mind that every move they
made, everything they made, every word they spoke was being stored,
analyzed and sold to bigger people and the bigger people were getting
even bigger rooms. It was wonderful and everyone thought that the
mayor of the town would keep this party from ever ending. I mean, it
was now an institution like a community center. Surely it would last
forever.
Then one day, the boy decided no one
would be allowed in the party with their business cards, invitations
to their parties or their pictures of their work unless they paid him
and he would take everything in the house they had worked and put
there and charge them to keep it there or take it away.
The people screamed and cried because
they had spent years building their rooms, decorating them and
getting a huge following of people to party with in their rooms and
now they either paid for each person and each little thing they had
put in the room or it would just disappear. Years of work would just
disappear and they would have nothing to show for it.
So they screamed to mayor for help but
while they were partying the boy had put all those billions he was
making into electing a mayor that saw things his way and didn't
believe anything should be for the benefit of the people, they should
pay for it. He did nothing. And the people in one day lost their work
and all the friends they had made because no one knew how to reach
them outside of the party house. And the big people, who had money to
pay for rooms, made even more money now because the boy knew what
everyone liked and he could sell the people with the most money the
addresses of all the people who like their kind of work. He made even
more money and didn't need to spend money on making the house better
because now the house only had a few rooms it used for the party.
And all the little people lost
everything and had to go back to building their showcase for their
talents all by themselves and it was really, really hard because the
boy had provided the rooms and the instructions for them.
And finally they got ready to open
their little rooms again, all decorated and ready for a party and no
one came. Anyone who came was whispering they were never coming back
because it was so hard to get there. So they came out of their room
and they looked around to see where all the people were. They looked
down the street and they discovered the big 6 lane highway in front
of their little room was now one lane and it had a 5 mph speed limit
and only 10 minute parking and they ran to the mayor and wringing
their hands and wanted to know where their road went.
You get what you can pay for and if you
want the big road back, you have to pay my friend over their that
runs my campaign to build you more lanes on the road.
“But isn't that illegal?” the
chorus sang.
“It used to be,” the mayor
whispered, “but no more.”
“We'll vote you out!” they vowed
and off to the polls they went. At the end of the day, the mayor had
won the election by a landslide.
“How??” they cried and then they
looked at the map and they discovered, his business friends were now
people and they got a bigger a vote than a hundred thousand of them
and even their very own district and there was no way to vote him out
of office, no way to get their little business back, nothing they
could do except go to work for the big companies with their own huge
rooms, buy their products, buy their food and water, rent their rooms
to sleep in and get up the next morning and go back to work for them
until they couldn't work any more.
And the boy was very happy until one
morning when his revenues went way down and he wandered out into his
house and discovered he had no one partying. All big rooms had built
their own houses and they had everyone living in them, buying from
them and they only threw the people out to party with him that were
old, sick and couldn't work any more and those people didn't have any
money. They just sat and played his games all day and even the games
were leaving because no one had enough money to buy anything in their
games.
And then wars began because there were
too many worker/slaves and they only needed the strongest to live and
buy more and the wars were because my product is better than the guy
down the street who has bad people working and making his product and
we know we are better........
