In other words, let us pay Atlas to shrug. Let's pay the vampire squids to leave us alone -- once and for all.
I'm not talking about industrial capitalists. I'm not referring to the guys who run companies that make shoes and other useful items. We still need those people. I'm talking about the vampires -- the Wall Streeters, the international bankers, the leveraged buyout guys, the Bain capitalists.
The vampires don't do anything for the economy except drain blood from it. So let's just pay the fanged ones to slink off into that sinister night, off to their castles, far from our villages.
Put them on those islands of affluence that they've been talking about. Give them hidden estates. Give them vaults filled with money, enough to swim in, as in the Scrooge McDuck comics. Ship in the classiest of hookers, the finest of foods. Golden toothbrushes. Silver-bound editions of Ayn Rand. Anything they want.
They may enjoy this life of utter privilege and decadence as long as they abide by the rules: They may never again participate in any way with the real economy. They may never again have anything to do with the political process. They may never again assail us with their hateful faces or their foolish opinions. The vampires must stick to their own kind -- forever.
Obviously, no-one can accuse me of fomenting class warfare, since I propose giving the uppermost classes everything they could possibly want. I just want them to go away.
As long as they remain hidden in their own world, they won't know what's happening in this one. We can ship them all the pseudo-art that Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons can produce, and we'll let them maintain the belief that this crap is still considered worthwhile. In the meantime, people in the outside world can support the work of real artists.
Granted, there are a few institutions, such as the opera and the symphony orchestra, which may suffer if we segregate the vampires away from the human beings. On the whole, however, I think the benefits of this plan would outweigh the problems.
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