.::. Wealth, Greed & Power .::.

Being a History student, I’ve always been quite perturbed about how history always repeats itself.  The root of many problems in life always revolve around greed and power.  All conflicts between people and war between nations, within or against religion – the heart of the problems remains unchanged.  It’s ironic, because at the end of the day, everyone just wants to be loved and to be happy.  How many manage to see the big picture and find happiness and contentment?

Sometimes, it’s impossible to talk sense to people, and I realized that people can have so divergent views that they will never ever see it the way you do.

I believe in karma, I believe that every action has its resultant consequences.  I believe that those who capitalize on humans’ weakness to generate fear and capitalize on their greed and insecurities will bear the consequences of their action someday. 

I can’t for the life of me understand how educated people can succumb to high risk investments or what I call Ponzi schemes.  There’s so many UK land schemes where people lost large amounts of money the past decades, yet it keeps happening again and again like a spoilt recorder.  There are people who pay for future services in advance, believing that they are ‘saving’ or ‘earning’ money because the company keeps increasing their service prices.  Inflation is real and legit, but the issue with such a private company is how they can account for so much uncertainty and provision enough to meet these future obligations.  

Huge public listed companies governed by laws fall, yet people believe in small private companies with little transparency and much less governance.  Do people truly believe what they are told by these companies to part with their money?  This becomes almost like a Ponzi scheme where the business may not make accurate projections and provision for their obligations.  When the money dries up and they sell less packages or see a spike in redemption, they end up with cashflow problems and eventually face bankruptcy.  

What happens when a company becomes bankrupt?  

What you buy from them become worthless and the bosses behind such companies basically escape unscathed and can easily open another company to continue in the same line of business (or a different line).  These bosses have enjoyed high salary with great benefits and expenses charged to companies.  Companies have to pay their creditors and banks first, and they almost always do not have enough to do so.  Banks have to write off these bad debts, but customers end up with nothing. It might not be that they are out to cheat, it may be poor management or bad judgement or a combination of everything.  However, people behind these companies become richer at the expense of many oblivious customers – people who believe that they are saving or making money easily.  It's so easy to capitalize on human's fear and greed.

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Everyone knows this, but how many truly have enough judgement when they need it?