If you want to make new money in this world, you have to be aggressive and creative. Jeff Bezos got rich from Amazon.com because he was early to the show and willing to buy out competitors as they arose. Walmart was slow and sluggish in responding and it paid the price. In the same industry, Information Technology, Microsoft was legendary for using its Windows operating system ownership to give it an edge when creating software that ran on the platform. It first sold DOS to IBM when it didn’t even own an operating system! Microsoft was canny, snake-wriggly, and aggressive, and its victories were like dominoes falling in an industry operated by geeks and losers with no business sense.

In the 19th Century, John Rockefeller started Standard Oil and used a number of barely legal, underhanded tricks to drive competitors out of business. He especially cut deals with the train operators that moved a great deal of the oil around. He was so successful that Standard Oil became synonymous with retail oil, and his success forced the government to act on antitrust grounds.

The biggest enemy of the successful monopolizer is the government, of course. Google has run into considerable trouble in Europe because it offends the local governments who don’t like to see an American company with all that power. With governments around the world staffed by left-leaning bureaucrats, they have a native jealousy of the freedom and riches of the private sector magnates who make the world go around. It is not surprising that they would use their power to come down hard whenever they can.

I would posit that it’s not fairness they’re seeking but revenge. The unsuccessful always peck at the feet of the winners of life like the pigeon on the high up apartment ledge in the movie Cat’s Eye. They want you to fall and fall fast.

The Rothschilds banking family has long had an intimate relationship with power centers, and thus was able to avoid the worst of the sanctions possible against it. If you want to survive with jealous bureaucrats, it helps to cozy up to them. Bezos starting Headquarters 2 in Washington and buying the Washington Post helps his cause in that regard.

The best thing to do is to do what the American defense industry does: hire ex-generals and -admirals to staff your company at good rates of pay. Or the way the Japanese government and industry trade workers casually. When you form an umbilical cord connection between yourself and government you insulate yourself from the worst hurricane effects of the capital city.

Although there was talk of breaking up Microsoft during the turn of the Millennium, Bill Gates escaped censure by bowing before the Attorneys-General who brought their case against him. He was sufficiently meek to satisfy the wolf-like instincts of the government bureaucrats. After they drove him out of the company, they relaxed their future vigilance against Microsoft because he was no longer there to threaten industry after industry (like the banking industry).

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has always been looked upon favorably as a result of its humanized ownership and select buying of name companies. It doesn’t slash and burn with employee reductions and it doesn’t dominate markets with sub-companies like GEICO; it only provides a quality service at a fair price, with the financial muscle of the conglomerate behind it. The government doesn’t mind that. In fact, it’s fair to say that if every company was as responsible as Berkshire Hathaway there would be no antitrust actions or penalties enacted at the national or international level.

The fact that Warren Buffett has bequeathed the majority of his lifetime wealth to charity, as has Bill Gates, makes the left-wingers smile. Unlike Carlos Slim Helu, whose telecommunications business dominates such markets as Mexico in order to profit him and him alone, certain American billionaires are willing to abort a family dynasty to spread the wealth around.

We live in a capitalistic age, but the left dominates the political landscape, even when the right wins. This schizophrenic society — right-wing economically, left-wing politically — is never wholly comfortable with the Darwinian use of money. Heavy taxation in liberal countries like Canada insure that the profits of business serve the social net. The weak and incompetent are mollycoddled, denying the rich an extra yacht or two. Is there justice in putting the straitjacket to Money?