If

If
By David Glenn Cox

Lets all play a little game that I call "if." This is a situational game where you put yourself into the character of someone else. It is important for you to remember that during this game you are someone else, because this game requires different scenarios which, if you just portrayed yourself, might inhibit the game.

Think of this game as similar to Monopoly, except that in this version there are no rules. You may do anything that you like. If you have enough money you will never go to jail; like Monopoly you will simply buy your way out of it.

You have plenty of money, so much that it is never even an issue. You have lived your entire life as the spoiled child of a billionaire. No one has ever said “no” to you because they are employees of your family. You graduate from college and decide to go into the real estate business and locate a piece of property, which would be perfect for an upscale apartment building. Problem is there is a low income housing project there now. So what do you do?

A. Try to find the residents new housing?

B. Advocate the end of public housing in favor of neighborhood housing vouchers?

C. Ask the city's Road Commissioner to investigate widening the street and upgrading the utilities while encouraging the Building Commissioner to investigate structural problems that you believe make the current building unsafe? (Remember that people do what you ask without question.)

If you try to cajole the residents into moving, new residents will simply take their place. Advocating an end to public housing could take years if not decades. With the right amount of encouragement inspectors can find problems with older buildings. We can’t be too cautious when it comes to public safety, now can we? Widening the road would mean traffic delays and rerouting public transport. It would encourage the residents to leave while depressing property prices in the area.

What plan would you use to get your apartment building completed?

In this next scenario you are the king of a small and technologically backward country. You are King Nobooboo the 5th. An oil company geologist discovers huge oil deposits on the tribal lands of the Weinnocence people. These are a gentle people who live peacefully on the river that runs through your country. Unlike you, the king, they were not educated at Swiss boarding schools; they are illiterate and live far from the capital city of Iownit. The oil drilling could very well poison the water which the river people need to survive. As king, you and your country stand to earn billions. So, what do you do?

A. Allow the oil companies to drill and attempt to relocate the Weinnocence people?

B. Order by King's Decree that only the highest environmental standards will be tolerated?

C. Wait until the damage is done and the waters are fatally polluted. Then, after the Supreme Court has ruled against the oil companies, insist that no more oil be allowed to leach into the river within five hundred feet of the Weinnocence tribal lands?

Remember that as king you have many rivals and antagonizing a multinational oil company could mean an end of the Nobooboo line. How will you enforce the King's Decree so far from the capital? How can you assist your people without antagonizing the oil company and threatening your position? By strongly agreeing with the Supreme Court you look regal, a modern leader adhering to the rule of law. You duck the blame while passing the buck. You stand up strongly for the rights of the Weinnocence people and you never, ever mention that the oil drilling is upstream from the Weinnocence tribal land.

How would you help your people as king?

In this scenario you are the sole heir to a clock-making fortune. Your factory employs two hundred workers making clocks of all descriptions. In your office hangs the portrait of your grandfather who started the clock company in a little shop downtown. You earn a good living but fear for the future because of tough competition from overseas. You meet your old college roommate who is also the heir to a fortune and he offers to fly you to the big game in his private jet. You feel embarrassed because you were always smarter than he was but you don’t have a private jet. What do you do?

A. Work harder to sell more clocks and earn more money?

B. Sell the clock company and abandon the family business and invest the profits on Wall Street?

C. Contract with a Chinese manufacturer to build your clocks for half the price and pocket the profits?

The clock market is stable so what can be done to encourage people to buy more clocks? Selling the company after several generations could be difficult because even though you are the sole owner you have many relatives who depend on the company for paychecks. Contracting with the Chinese would simplify your life. With only a warehouse, accounting and sales staff you would qualify as a small business. The extra profits would allow you to go aircraft shopping while keeping the relatives happy.

How can you sell more clocks to earn more money and keep your relatives on the payroll?

So, how did you do? Where you able to solve the problems while keeping everyone happy? Did you accomplish your goals?

Mark Twain’s Huck Finn once said, “It’s troublesome to do right and it ain’t no trouble to do wrong and the wages are just the same.” However, in our modern world the wages aren’t the same. Our capitalist system keeps score by the money in your pocket; few are interested in what a great guy you might be.

Big cats such as tigers must be taught by their mothers to hunt and kill. Raised by humans and without a mother's lessons they become giant house cats, still dangerous because of their size but far from jungle predators. Conversely, humans must be taught empathy from their mothers or they will become the same jungle predator who feeds without emotion.

Humans are creatures that can be conditioned to accept most any sort of outrage. When we play Monopoly we take joy in bankrupting our opponents. Why would that be any different for those who play Monopoly with real money? If the goal is to gain the advantage over others and make money in the process, then dispossessing the poor means you win!

If you are a king your role is to take care of your people but never to forget that you must take care of your throne first. The Japanese nation was fire-bombed to ashes during World War Two and the only concern during the surrender talks was in preserving the throne of the Emperor. Those who feel they are entitled will always feel entitled. They will always act in their own behalf first and make all other issues secondary.

Those in legacy positions of family hierarchy tend to do whatever is necessary to keep up the appearance of success. They have the gold but never learned how to dig with a shovel, so they know the gold comes from the ground but have no idea how to get it out themselves. They push for tax cuts to increase their earnings rather than working to increase their earnings. Like lightning, they take the shortest route to ground and last for only an instant.

If you answered that strict control by civil government is the only guard against unfettered human nature, then you have earned a perfect score.

It wasn't public housing though, it was just landlord housing. I was the agent on both ends, so basically everyone expected me to make problems go away. Each tenant was a different case. The old man went into senior housing, which was a good thing because he had a "helper" who was actually doing little more than feeding him and getting drunk. The crackheads were the easiest to get rid of, I simply met them across town with some cash while the building was secured to ensure that they did not return (they had agreed to vacate). The grandmother with a grandchild who also had a child was the hardest to do because they wanted to stay together and Section 8 doesn't work that way. So, I called in a specialist who knew how to work the system. All in all it cost my clients about 1.5X the monthly rent per unit to get the tenants to vacate. If I am not mistaken, this is pretty close to what the SF Landlord tenant law forces landlords to pay evicted tenants.