Chapter 9: Investing in DemocracyHistory and vote buying; Tudor business plans; Court schemes as alternative speculations to commercial and engineering schemes; National debt as financial intermediary; Privatising elections; From wills, computer fraud and EuroCredit to debts and taxes; Union of Free Gotland Voters; Collective bargaining and the price of a vote; The Heavy Mob.
The European historic records for the past many hundred years abound with stories of this businessman or that order of merchants drawing up business plans for deposing this prince, destroying that priest and replacing some other courtier. Why should you believe that this age is any different?In Tudor times when Pretenders lay thick and fast on the battlefields of Europe, some of these schemes came complete with Profit and Loss Accounts and Cash Flow Statements. Investing in court schemes was an alternative to taking shares in a merchant venture and were still popular well into the nineteenth century and were standing up well despite the competition from Canal Schemes - using the National Debt in much the same way. Why should you believe that anything has changed?
If the Public Water Supply can be loaded with debt and sold back to its original owners at five times the price, then clearly anything goes. Whyever should you believe that the eighteen or so election businesses in Europe shou1d be exempt from privatization?
It takes so little effort to redirect the proceeds of a few wills from the Cats’ Home to the Money for Old Votes Swiss account. Add just a dash of computer fraud with the help of your friendly secret service hackers. Top with some insider trading on the Baltic Exchange. And you are all ready for a chat with your EuroBank manager only too pleased to accept the collateral of your shares in the exciting Swedish LandBank Company controlled by the EuroHomes Consortium of Medellin and Hong Kong.
But perhaps it is not all bad. At least there are plans for a Union of Free Gotland Voters. And there are signs that Brussels is taking them seriously. There was that case of a leaked policy paper recommending an initial offer of five and a half thousand kronor settling for six thousand a vote with a contingency line of credit for a Visby Harbour Project.
The signs of things to come? The way ahead for Gotland 2000? And we have not even broached the matter of your daughters! More exoticism?