The annual company holiday party was held over the weekend at Steak ‘n Stein. As President and Founder, we were compelled to offer some remarks. What follows is an extract of our impractical ramblings…
To begin, 2013 was another dreadful year for our humble business. All successes we had were radically overwhelmed by our relentless flaws. Any opportunities we stumbled upon we promptly tripped over…always landing flat on our face. But we don’t let it get us down…
We weren’t looking to build a better mousetrap when we started this publishing business back in 2006. We thought selling newsletters would be like selling bagels with cream cheese. Offer a bargain, like buy five and you get the sixth free, and the world would beat a path to our door.
This, of course, was the first of our many miscalculations. For selling newsletters has been like selling ice cubes to Eskimos…we can hardly give them away for free. Even worse, the paid publications we offer have been welcomed by the marketplace with a silence so deafening it has popped our eardrums.
Several months ago, for instance, we wrote a dandy publication showing people precisely how to profit from President Obama’s failures. We thought we’d reap a harvest of money so abundant we’d be able to leave our day job, pay for our kids’ college, and move to an estate home. Unfortunately, we can count the number of sales using our fingers and toes.
The Moral Questions We Delight In
Still, we greet our failures with a smile. We get after it each day with the stubborn determination of a pack mule. Certainly, with plenty of luck, and years and years of hard work, we’ll eventually become an overnight success.
But even if we never quite make it the happiness and hope we derive from our endeavors is worth far more than the effort we expend on it. Each day we open our eyes, look around, and see amazing, extraordinary things. We must pinch ourselves to confirm it isn’t all one big crazy dream.
We are captivated by the stable instability of the economy and markets. We are mesmerized by the obsession of governments to influence things to their liking. Moreover, we are aghast at the harebrained schemes employed by bureaucrats as prudent policy.
They make promises they can’t keep, for things people don’t deserve, by borrowing money from foreigners. Through their charitable efforts of forced philanthropy, they’ve made millions of perfectly able people into dependents of the state. In doing so, they’ve ballooned the debit side of the balance sheet ledger beyond reparation.
Taking top honor as the most absurd, however, is the Federal Reserve…who keeps it all going by creating vast amounts of digital monetary units from thin air and emitting them into the financial system. Whence do they get the money to giveth? To whom do they giveth the money to? These are the moral questions that we delight in.
Confessions of a Compulsive Scribbler
Unlike your average Congressman we are not saddled with the burden of making the world a better place. We have no grandiose ideas to prevent the polar icecaps from melting with cow fart cap laws. Nor do we try to lower the unemployment rate by printing money.
We do not tell our neighbors what type of light bulb they must use. We do not mandate what website they must log in at to buy their health insurance. We do not even care whether our neighbor’s children drink soda pop or chew bubblegum. In other words, we do not meddle in the private affairs of our fellows.
To the contrary, we punch the time clock each day, take in the madness, and then we scribble out our little letters with the hope that we’re helping others make sense of things – and make money too. No doubt, the whole charade’s absurd. Yet this is the incredible, outrageous, world we live in…and this is why we do what we do. Quite frankly, we can’t help ourselves.
Most of all we are beholden to our readers. They are out there. They appreciate and pay for our products. In addition, they revel along with us as the world turns upside down again and again.
Perhaps there are better, more lucrative, and more respectable lines of work. But has there ever been an occupation that was more fun?
We’ve yet to find one. Have you?
Thus we’re compelled to take another whack at it for another year…or more. Occasionally, we’ll dig deep and swing for the fences. We’re bound to connect on one of them.
Happy Holidays!
Sincerely,
MN Gordon
for Economic Prism
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