The Way We Live Now: Forcing the world to cater to our every selfish whim. Hey, the world does it to us, so why not? Charity must bring us profits! Vacations every week! Love thy neighbor only maybe! No hobo.

Everybody these days is talking about and handing out Nobel Prizes in relation to microloans, which are basically tiny ass loans that nobody could buy that much with but they make you feel really good if you give em, and you can go visit your loanees' new water buffaloes, etc. But what you didn't know is that the banks who give microloans are double heroes because they make a god damn ton of profits off them. This way poors learn about credit, and banks can soak them for 100%, so everybody wins? (Asst: check whether everybody wins here).

Of course, there are other ways to extort the poor, for economic success. For example, you can charge people thousands of dollars to "renegotiate" their mortgages and whatnot, and as long as they pay your fee, it really doesn't matter if they can pay their mortgage or not!

Another alternative is to move to Bolinas, California and sell $300,000 water meters. Which are a hot commodity in Bolinas, California.

How to react against this crazy world, where forces much larger than yourself are screwing you out of your precious, precious money? What can one regular jerk to to take on this unjust world? Well, you can take every Friday off for 17 years. That's a start.

And a finish.