How To Get Really, Really Rich

Pick up a science-fiction book, historical romance, or mystery. Watch an action movie. Or you can learn it the boring way...by studying history.

1) Take over a small country by killing almost everyone in it.

2) If that's not an option, use your power and influence to climb the ranks until you're in charge of everything in the country.

3) Fill the ranks with people you've bought and/or can be bought if necessary.

4) Remove from power all that would oppose you.  (read: demote, discredit, disenfranchise, imprison, or kill).

5) Begin "Operation Find and Replace" -- replace honest, fair, strong people in the army, police forces, and media outlets with weak-minded, weak-willed people who lack creativity and imagination and will do as they're told. Choose the most weaselly ones to supervise the others. (You know, the ones who grope the female employees and fire them if they protest or fight back.) 

6) Remove the children from their parents' influence and fill the schools with teachers who are so relieved to have a job (remember, these are the dredges of the academic barrel) that they willingly teach the children hogwash.

7) Anyone who does not conform must be cast out - first from school, then from society. Silenced or imprisoned.

8) Teach children that being alone is the most desirable, awesome symbol of success. That friends should be replaced when they are annoying or say inconvenient truths, family is for visiting no more than four times a year, and intimate relationships are for the unintelligent.

9) Take processed children, set them in "careers" that require no independent thinking. In fact, independent thinking is frowned upon. The correct answer to all questions is: "it's against company policy."

10) When the people crack~ as people tend to do when their lives are devoid of meaning, happiness, and freedom~ sell them alcohol. The alcohol will keep them slogging through the misery for days, weeks, years...they'll be so busy forgetting their misery every night that they'll never examine WHY they're so miserable. Ban any other substances unless they have the same effect.

11) Make sex a bad thing...people will drink more alcohol when they're having less sex. 

12) In fact, make anything physical a bad thing. Real fighting, real driving...why don't people just use machines instead? Imitate...settle for less. You don't want them remembering that they're human. 

 If you succeed in creating the above recipe, you can milk the people of your country for everything they have. Charge them for things they've made with their own hands. Charge them for things that have been passed down through their families...things you have no right or interest in. Overcharge them, fine them, ticket them, even steal from them. All the while, make them feel guilty for being recklessly selfish and spending too much. Make them feel like poverty is knocking on their door, while you dine on gold plates, wear diamonds on your fingers, necks, and ears, indulge in the finest wines, cars, homes, vacations, entertainment....with their money.