The House the People Built

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........