Winning the Lottery

When I was younger, the question was posed to me, "what would you do if you won the lottery?"  Being an individual who had learned a thing or two from math class as opposed to actually doing well in them, I thought about investing it.  The lottery at the time was 2.5 million dollars that is really not a lot.  I looked up the interest rate on an average CD was something like 4%.  So little me was like, WOW.  I could just drop it into a CD and every year the bank would give me 100,000 dollars a year.  That is almost 2000 dollars a week.  For a kid my age, that was unfathomable to earn for the rest of my life so long as a bank was around to give me the interest.  I geeked out on it and started thinking about it some more.  ...WHERE does this money come from?  In 18 years, my money will double!  Is that money just coming out of the Aether?  I looked deeper.  

My findings disturbed me.  This money had to come from somewhere.  Where do banks get their money?  Little me thought, people lend it to them.  But they can't spend what they are lent, how do they afford the fancy safe and happy employees and stuff?  Well they lend it out at interest.  My young heart began to drop into an abyss, but my mind had not caught up to it.  I am lending to the bank at interest... They are lending everything they have (ten times what they have, as I found out) at interest and taking some of that interest to give to me.  ... I am aiding in banks stealing interest from those poor enough to need a loan.  THAT is what is making me richer.  Young, paragon me was not thrilled at this discovery. 

Our politics around money are sickening.  Words like 'smart' and 'successful' are used to describe the actions of pirates in their most ruthless renditions.  All business seems to reek with the idea that selling at the most unfair price possible is the best.  But I am sure I don't need to tell you this.  I will spare you the rant.  

Something needs to change.  Something has to give.  

One thing that needs to change is the idea of growth and gain.  Growth is an essential part of our business world.  If a business, and even colleges are under this descriptor, is not growing, it is not successful.  But ask yourself how growth occurs, it happens when the owner is making significantly more money than she is taking in.  So she expands so she can take in more.  This concept of exponential growth taken to its logical conclusion will yield exactly one future-- one where the master thief will own the entire world through a few megabusinesses and those he makes his success off of will make money only enough to meet the the thief's demands for continual growth until there is nothing left with which to grow.  (Curious, that is the very definition of a cancerous growth)  Work as a tool for survival and not for personal gain is the very definition of slavery.  Ask yourself now: is this the world that we find ourselves in?  If not, how close are we to it?  

Yet there is always hope.  People do not know their true power.  Pablo Picasso said, "the goal of life is to find one's purpose.  The meaning of life is to give it away."  A world with this mentality at its center is always but a mere step away.  Whatever beautiful world you wish to see, dear readers, enact it.  Use your imagination and let that world envelop you and bring forth your actions.  You may be one drop in a limitless ocean, but what is an ocean if not a multitude of drops?