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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

TED TALKS WITH FUGGER


(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.

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