### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### #### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ## ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ###### ####### [ Imagine Being In Power ] [ By Eric Chaet ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ IMAGINE BEING IN POWER by Eric Chaet Imagine you were in a position of power in the world, such that you could improve what happens in the immediate future--from right now, for the next 20 years, say. Let's say that you control a great fortune--money & assets that can be exchanged relatively easily & quickly for money--& that everyone is eager for you to take the lead, realizing that you are benevolent. Maybe any rivals you might have had are exhausted. So, what do you do to help the people of Sierre Leone, Ghana, Nigeria; or Belarus or Algeria or Palestine/Israel or Paraguay or Columbia or Burma/Myanmar--or India, or China, or Japan--or those in Britain not currently prospering--or in Sweden or in Poland or in the USA or Mexico? What about in Argentina, where, as I write this in early November, 2001, the government seems about to default on its debts to foreigners, &, to prevent doing so, keeps cutting back on every conceivable benefit to its already increasingly impoverished & resentful population--a scenario not unlike Germany before Hitler came to power in 1933--while the attention of those in power in the USA and Britain, for instance, is absorbed in dealing with shadowy terrorist organizations, bombing Afghanistan, combating anthrax (& the possibility of even worse biological, chemical, or nuclear plagues)--& "manufacturing consent" for its policies, as Noam Chomsky would put it? (Some among the political-economic elites of the USA & Britain, especially, continue to push for increasing world prosperity via global trade, as tho the attacks of Sept. 11 & following--anthax in the mail--didn't mean that global trade could not possibly become anything like universal in the immediate future. Even national trade is getting bogged down; it may be that even local trade will become very clumsy.) For now, for a change, let's not just say that those who are in position of leadership are corrupt, evil, stupid, greedy, whatever. Instead, let's imagine that you had power & money; or some power & some money; or were in a position of significant influence, & people were likely to let you use some of their money, if only you could present a reasonable investment plan that would transform the situation for those suffering greatly, such that not only would they make progress & be better off, but the investment, over time, would be repaid from the resulting profits--that is, from whatever of value was produced beyond the inputs required to produce it. Okay, what are the investments to be made? How is money to be spent to do good, rather than only to further enrich the richest, at the expense of everyone else & of the common wealth of the planet? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #615 Underground eXperts United 2002 uXu #615 Send your submissions to: submission@uxu.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------