- Money changes everything
As evidence, read any of the myriad stories about folks receiving a huge slug of windfall cash that subsequently destroys their life. You won’t find many success stories, although that may be a sampling problem.
My buddy Aitch observes that a corporate implosion often occurs just after completion of a shiny new headquarters building in a far-off location. That construction marks the revenue peak, not necessarily the point where profit margins stabilize.
And, of course, carpet-bombing a company with C-notes doesn’t guarantee future success, as witness recent developments in the solar power field.
But the lure of easy money can be exceedingly hard to resist…
Oh Lord! Let me prove
Winning a Powerball game
Would not change me. Much.
Government-run gambling boils down to a regressive tax on folks who weren’t paying attention during the probability and statistics part of math class. The fact that (some part of) the “profits” go into school budgets demonstrates that irony remains an integral part of the modern world.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
>My buddy Aitch observes that a corporate implosion often occurs just after completion of a shiny new headquarters building…
This is so true — I call them “hubris HQs”.
Apple’s proposed galactic HQ is a prime candidate. Not only is it over the top design-wise, they want to build it on hallowed ground (ex-HP campus). I see some seriously bad ju-ju.
Once they turn a spade on that project, it’s time to look hard at selling short, no?
For what HP has become, it only seems fitting …
Why the name went with the PC company instead of the instrumentation company, I cannot fathom. When whatever’s left of HP finally withers away, I hope somebody reattaches the name to the test equipment.
And if they’d do something sensible with calculators again, that’d be icing on the cake…
Someone (I forget who) once proposed to me that government should be funded entirely by lottery revenues. After all, it’s the stupid people that make us need the government, so they might as well pay for it.
That would certainly put an upper bound on the problem, wouldn’t it?