To hell with mathematics or physics. Fact of the matter is that many people are RICH and defying all laws of economic physics… or are they? What happens when gravity starts to influence someone who is flying without any visible means of support? How do you keep your magic carpet flying above the scorching Sahara sands toward the oasis that is your destination?
For decades I was flying on a magic carpet over scorching desert sands. The economic realities of joblessness, homelessness and abject poverty were racing by, hundreds of feet below, endless sand dunes trailing off in all directions into the horizons. It seemed like an invisible “force field” contained a microclimate above the surface of that magic carpet on which I sat waiting… for what? Waiting for an oasis with fresh cool spring water bubbling up from the desert. Waiting to finally settle down in a place that I could forever call home.
What is that “oasis” I would call home?
For starters, picture beautiful homes on rolling foothills with mountains in the distance. Examining one of these beautiful homes — my home — notice the solar paneling covering the expansive roof. Although it is the middle of summer, the inside of that home feels like a frosty mug right out of the freezer, filled with refreshing cold organic beer. Follow me into the kitchen. Inside Subzero refrigerators are every kind of organic produce, glacier water and flash frozen fish from Alaska, and that’s just what your eye may catch first. The kitchen is an culinary organic paradise.
Every appliance, air-conditioning system and hot tub is off the grid… and I mean nothing is drawing utility power. (That’s for back-up if the solar system goes down.)
The house is a self-contained, environmentally friendly wonderland that gives new meaning to the phrase “shut in.” The finances to keep it going, including the yearly property taxes, are as liquid as Lake Shasta. Egyptian cotton 600 thread-count sheets are washed in high-tech energy efficient washing machines. Peek in the garage and you will see a shiny BMW hybrid pulling power from the wall, cordless, and perhaps I will venture to brag that I got over 100 mpg on my recent drive to Yosemite.
For many people in 2008, this is a representation of reality that most people, we ordinary working folks, consider pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Then the ponzi schemers came out of the woodwork and descended upon the world of finance like locusts. Bernie Madoff was only visible because he looked more like a mutant cockroach than a ravenous locust, and his appetite and ability to satisfy it seemed to outstrip the swarm of locusts combined.
The truth is there are still people keeping low profiles out there in neighborhoods covering large areas from the visible Beverly Hills to more nondescript enclaves of wealth. The economy is conspiring to strip them of their wealth and many are running scared, while some are simply burying their heads in the sand with their asses facing an oncoming tidal wave that is a mile high.
How do you “have it all” in this world without feeling like your finances are a partially loaded barrel of a gun that you’re spinning while exclaiming “wheeeee!!!!” in a game of Russian Roulette? Does Warren Buffett have the “secret” living in a middle-class Omaha neighborhood with billions in net worth or was he just lucky? After all the truth of the matter is that everyone cannot be a billionaire like Buffett. If everyone had his instincts and smarts then an evolutionary “super Buffett” would become a billionnaire and all the other Buffetts, perhaps even Warren, would be consigned to the scrapheap of “we ordinary people” (you and me).
They say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates these proverbial one-eyed men? If so then rising above the masses to command enough resources to live in the aforementioned environmentally friendly house, awash in liquidity for a “rainy day” (as in Hurricane Katrina rainy) may not be as difficult as it seems. It may actually be within the reach of us ordinary folks who simply long for a good life on that resource rich oasis in the middle of the Sahara desert.
All Bummed Out Blog 