(pictured – one of my early talks at
the Chicago School of Economics)
Being a 'thought leader', Fugger
(a.k.a. the people's blogger, a.k.a. me) has been invited to do one
of those TED Talks lecturettes for the internet. I want to make the
right impression so I reckon I'll wear casual but upmarket sneakers,
a Lacoste polo shirt, and a baseball cap with the word DARPA written
on it. I'll smile and come over all harmless and seem like I'm
basically just a good guy because, y'know, I am a good guy, mainly,
for the most part and you shouldn't worry about the other part. I
might be holding a tennis racquet too, for no reason really other
than to give the impression that I've just come off the court and am
the physically active type. Maybe I'll have small towel around my
neck. Maybe I'll be padding my brow with the towel as I come on stage
and then I'll drape the towel around my neck. That kind of thing.
Signifiers of my well adjusted trustworthiness. I'll present myself
as a kind of athletic, casual, intelligent, non-evil, easy going,
geek guy and I'll open with a self-deprecating joke to invite a
gentle wave of the laughter of consensus from the audience. Oh yeah,
and I'll have a copy of Atlas Shrugged under my arm - for the real
heads.
But what will my talk be about I can
almost hear you wonder. Well, my talk will be about robbing. I'll be
presenting the crazy but sane idea that robbing is OK. 'Hey, it's OK
to rob', I'll say and the audience will gasp and maybe titter a
little. Then I'll go on to explain how you can get lots of things
from robbing and how western civilisation
has been robbing for as long as it's been a western civilisation.
'We'd be nothing without robbing and everyone likes to take so just
go for it, grab what you can', I'll say. 'Hey', you're probably
thinking out loud, 'what about the guy you are robbing from, he'll
have nothing' but I say that there is nothing stopping him from
robbing too. We'll all just take stuff and it will be a meritocracy
of sorts because the person who is best at robbing will get the most
stuff. On a global scale, we, the West, will be the best because
we'll be able utilise our trade advantages
to impose tariffs on those who object to being robbed from and use
our advanced technologies, drones and all that, to keep taking stuff
from them. You might say that this is unfair on those who aren't good
at robbing or, on a global scale, countries at too
much of an economic disadvantage to develop robbing technology or
influence the rules of worldwide economic thievery/transaction. My
response to that is that being robbed from will incentivise
those who are robbed from to improve their robbing skills. It's a
kind of 'pull your socks up guys' thing. At TED Talks I'll also try
and argue that robbing is good for the environment in some way but I
haven't figured that part out yet.
Then I'll point out that shoplifters and illegal downloaders
are not included in this new thought paradigm and that people who
indulge in such activities should be shot in the head by privately
owned corporate militias. I think everyone is going to be pretty
impressed with my talk and I'll get a big round of applause and the video will go
viral.
After I'm done talking I'll go for
sushi with Patri Friedman and book a place on his seasteading cruiser
The Fountainhead. Going forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment