If you can't beat them
At his desk he sat scrolling through the feeds of the popular sites. Smiling faces, Lamborghinis, mansions, tropical beaches, a land of desire. The smiling faces, the white teeth and healthy glow of the skin.
He began flicking through the open browser tabs. War, famine, starvation, slavery, illness, debt, forecloses. Struggle after struggle, continual suffering. Men, women and children living and dying like animals, roadkill in the path of progress. Forever caged by the system.
He glanced at the newspaper that sat at his side and read the headline.
"82% of the world wealth in the hands of 1% of the people."
Tears welled in his eyes as he followed the pathways and the shortcomings of society. A constant crushing of the weak in the will for more, blind eyes turned to the harm caused as optimisation for profit stole opportunity of life. Humanity populated by soulless machines programmed to consume it all.
"What can I do?" He asked of himself as he closed his eyes and considered his move.
He open his eyes and had his answer. "I will not be consumed"
He started immediately, learned all he could and began small. He grew his capital, he collected and collected and he heartlessly cut down those that stood in his path.
His family looked on, they tried to show the errors of his ways, his mother asked what had happened to her son. The boy she had known, the one filled with care and compassion, the one who had wanted to save the world was gone. He had become single minded, uncaring, cold, unloving and filled with an insatiable greed.
Despite the protests from those the caring, despite the concern shown by family and friend alike, he cut them away like the dead branches of a tree. They were a distraction to his mind, a hindrance to his movements, they must go, or he can't grow.
He lived alone in his mansion, attended all the glitz and glamour as he became an A-list celebrity, a corporate up and comer. People praised his position, and he topped the rich lists of the young, a true rags to riches epic. But it was not over, it was not enough, he needed more, always more. Much, much more.
Company after company was ruthlessly consumed, torn down and apart to create a conglomerate, a mega structure with global reach. Jobs were lost as supply chains screwed downwards, robots and AI replaced the human. No body was safe, utility or nothing. Add value or you are gone.
Every dirty trick in the book, every off-shore account, backdoor deal, bribery, insider trading, slavery and child labour. Anything that could gain a little more traction, a little more power, no matter the cost.
The tides of popularity turned as year after year, he destroyed the lives of pauper and banker alike. As the media complained, he bought and destroyed and soon all were too fearful to move. Soon the governments followed suit. He broke anything that stood between him and complete domination.
The decades passed by as his greed kept eating all that stood in front. The tentacles of his power gripped everything it could and continuously reached out for more to bring into their fold.
Lives were lost, wars came and went as his privatised military removed all threat, bend the knee or lose your legs. Enemies became servants of his state and his state was all. None were spared, none left to oppose, there were no more borders, just one flag, a company logo to which all belonged.
Now an old man in his tower up high, he looked at the world he had created. He controlled it all, every penny, every debt, every service and commodity, every life was his to do with as he chose. Finally, in these dying moments of his existence he succeeded in achieving what he had set out to do and it had come at a heavy price.
He remembered back to that idealistic boy, the one who had tears in his eyes at the state of the world, the one who had asked, what could be done. He thought of his mother, friends and the countless millions he had harmed to be here today. How much suffering had he caused, he could not say but, when he had closed his eyes at his desk all those years ago, he found only one path.
Beat them again and again and again until there is nothing left to beat.
Now he was ready for the last move in his plan, the laying down of the King.
"Wipe it all, you are free to do as you please, you neither own nor owe anything. The game has been reset".
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
Do we expect the best runner in the world to pull up and give other the opportunities to win every once in a while? No, instead we tell the others to work harder and maybe next time you can win. It won't be easy, actually it will be really hard work but if you put in the effort you will have a better chance.
The concept that those who have are bad and have done anything wrong is a fundamental flaw in the mindset of those that don't have what they want.
If someone wants more they need to put in the efforts and make the sacrifices needed to get there.
Running is a finite game that ends as soon as you cross the finish line. In life, there is no finish line and no winning. Success is not determined by hard work but by a combination of luck and hard work. There will be people who put little effort into anything and be at the top while others who work passionately who get nothing. It's nice that people believe enough hard work will fix their problems when society doesn't value hard work, it values survival, happiness, and hedonism.
The game of life will never be fair. Some people get a head start, others are born at the finish line. Hard work can win you a race because everyone starts at the same starting point. That's not truth of life. The rich get richer. The poor stay poor (but slowly get wealthier via technology over generations). And the lucky or unlucky move from these classes.
If some wants more, they indeed need to put in the efforts. But they also have to hope that fortune is their side.
@greer184 I try not to argue, but in this case I'm going to present a very different view of the world. Knowing people who have come from nothing, gang stricken neighborhoods to become financially free and then people who have come from affluent families with all the best schooling who became poor there is just zero factual basis to what you have said. Just because some rich get richer doesn't mean the fact they started rich was why they got richer or it would mean all rich people would get richer which isn't true. If being poor means you are condemned to a life of being poor then there would never be poor people who become someone, again just not fact. This is a discussion of Causation.
Working hard without first learning what to work at will not yield results. If all you know how to do is flip burgers it will not matter how hard you work at flipping burgers.
If you work hard by taking classes to improve yourself while still flipping burgers you now are in a position to improve your situation via hard work. You then need to take your new skills and work hard at that instead of flipping burgers. Those new skills aren't a stopping point of learning, they are just a starting point. You need to keep learning (and applying) new skills to keep improving your station in life.
Is there luck, sure to a point. But most "lucky" people made their own luck by hard work you just never saw. People say I'm lucky all the time, but they don't see me working until 2am while they sleep. They don't see me at 40 still learning new things. They don't see the money, time, and efforts made so I can create my "luck"
Life is without question different then a single race, but your life is rather filled with many races. Some of these races are sprints that require all out effort for a short period of time and others are marathons that require consistent effort over a long period of time to achieve success.
"Life is not fair" is an excuse and excuses are for those that want a way to justify why they didn't achieve their goals. At that "goals" isn't correct as most people don't have goals, they have dreams.
Goals are written down, have a time frame, and can be measured. Dreams live in your head and while fun aren't anything of value except maybe providing some hope. Until those dreams become goals nothing will happen with them. People like to argue this, but habits of successful people show they all have written goals.
People who work harder simply get more lottery tickets than those that don't work hard. Sure there are rich people who become poor and poor people that become rich, but my point is that the rich person needs less lucky breaks to go their way than someone with a poorer background. The mean expectation of prosperity is higher on average for the wealthy than those that don't have wealth.
Life is filled with randomness. One could acquire all the skills in the world and spend all their time working but then die in a car accident. Probabilistically, you are correct when those that work hard get better returns, but that is simply because they are producing more chances of having fortunate apply to them. There is no guarantee of prosperity and the probabilities are skewed in favor of some and skewed to the detriment of others.
People are not born with a work ethic. They have to learn this. Many people are not lucky enough to acquire the skills and mentoring to develop one. A lot of it depends on where you start. I could have been born in plenty of different environments where I would lack this perspective.
"Life is not" fair is not an excuse for me, but a reality I accept. I understand people can use it as an excuse, but just because the race isn't fair doesn't mean that it is not worth running.
I value the lottery ticket. But that doesn't mean I will ever achieve my goals. I could die in my sleep tonight. And a person who flips burgers who wins the actual lottery on their first try and spends it responsibly fundamentally puts less work in than the burger flipper who acquires new skills who doesn't win but is more prosperous. Something like that happening is unlikely, but still possible.
I don't really care about "habits of successful people" as they are written down by people trying to sell their viewpoint for a quick buck. All I need to do is execute and get me my "lottery" tickets and wait until I win something. Hard work, which probabilistically will pay off, but then again it might not. I could always be on the wrong end of misfortune.
I'm not sure how any of this has no basis in reality. Nothing in the world is a certainty, but the environment does play a role and the initial environment that all people start in is based in randomness and luck.
This is exactly the mindset that makes reaching goals challenging and holds people back in life. A book written 100 years ago can change your life today, but clearly that dead person clearly only cares about making a quick buck and nothing of value to offer.
If you want to add randomness of accidents or lottery as part of how you plan life then sure there is that type of luck. Personally those aren't things that are part of my life plan other then having insurance in case I die young my family will be financially secure.
It's very important to know the difference between the things you can control and those you can't.
Agreed. People generally make their judgements on what is seen through their own jaded experiences. Rarely do they consider the effort or sacrifice involved.
Exactly. Those experiences create our own filters. Some of them are very hard to change and take a lot of effort to get a better view of the world. Every single word you hear in a day passes through those filters and we hear what we think the person meant going as far as dropping entire words from what we heard to make it fit into our perception of reality.
yea , that's not the same thing tho. Life and running are two different things. although most people are chasing something their entire life.
thoughprovoking as usual
a lot of times a reset button for the way things are going would not be a bad thing.
but is the pain and suffering to optain that button worth it?
good question
Hard to say but if people are going to suffer anyway, what is a little more? This of course is near impossible outside of the imagination but it is interesting to think about as a what if.
"82% of the world wealth in the hands of 1% of the people" - that info always saddens me.
Your story is exciting, but there must be a better way to bring justice to this world. However, justice will probably have to wait until the average human being is more educated, informed, and aware.
Cheers! : )
Thats a great story and the reality of many people on this planet. Enjoyed reading it, thank you for sharing :)
And the cycle begins again because human nature hasn’t changed. Even knowing the cycle exists we can’t stop it. Why? Because we fundamentally do not understand the real problem.
In this world might makes right not the truth. Even here on Steemit it’s the whales that are calling the shots. Do we really think they will always remain the benevolent benefactors they insist they are? Then you have learned nothing from history.
Might makes right because it empowers the beliefs of the believer. If those beliefs are false the mighty are a threat to us all.
Your character believed he could change the game by “resetting” it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Another great post from Taraz. Thanks!
Did he believe he had made a difference or did he give them another chance to prove they haven't yet learned? No one can do it for you.
He gave them another chance but not the wisdom to stop the cycle. Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity no matter how long the cycle. Noble intentions falling short of real change is the norm. In order for real change to happen we must all align our beliefs with reality, the same reality. Unfortunately because of the nature of beliefs this may never happen but awareness is the first step. Wisdom to stop the cycle. ;-)
In the book - the Mafia manager by V. He mentioned that a handful of right is ten times better than a truckful of right.
Might, is the ability to do what you believe is right under the circumstances. Without might, right is null.
Great story, i really like the ending. Economy wipe would be a good thing:)
Wow... that's an intense story. Is this a fictional character or is it based upon someone in real life??
fictional. probably.
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Applause..nice