Re: How to make money fast (in science fiction)

darkmoon@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> This is the problem - how to make serious money fast 
> with the least risk, starting from nothing (really 
> nothing, as stranger without past and without 
> documents) in todays America.
>
> The simplest and "scifiest" way - to become an 
> inventor, creating wonderful stuff like fusion power, 
> room temterature superconductors, artificial 
> intelligence etc.. is plain out. The Visitor has 
> enemies who have general idea where in the multiverse 
> is is hiding, and our timeline (together with many 
> "nearby" ones) is watched and any serious disturbance 
> from "normal evolution" of comparable civilzations 
> will be noticed. In other words, he can become a 
> leading businessman or politician (in fact, to amass 
> billion of dollars, he will have to), but he must not 
> behave differently from his Earthly counterparts.
>
> By now, the Visitor is learning English (he has still 
> heavy accent), works as undocumented manual laborer 
> and all his free time spends in library, learning as 
> much he can about this miserable world he is 
> imprisoned in...

He should have available to him means of analysis that 
we do not have - looking at the data, he should be able 
to see things about our social organization and 
activities that we cannot see.  Might be a successful
gambler on the foreign exchange market.

He probably cannot become a successful politician, too 
alien to have the common touch.  That leaves successful 
businessman.

Consider that Walmart became rich doing stuff that any 
man could do, and that lots of people were already 
doing.  Walmart cut out the wholesaler, creating the most 
direct possible link between producer and consumer, 
which many people were already doing, but unlike anyone 
else, was able to get this rather skilful task done on a 
very large scale by labor that was not very skilled at 
all.

Your alien cannot invent new gee whiz gadgets without 
being noticed, but he can invent new forms of 
organization, and it will not be apparent to ordinary 
humans.  They will see an organization, but it will not 
be apparent to them that it is different to other 
organizations.  How many people are aware of, or 
understand, how Walmart got rich, or what it is doing 
that is different?

The two big wealth generating innovations of recent
times have been rather too subtle to notice:  They are
Walmart cutting out intermediaries, and Google's
massively parallel AI.  Very few people understand, or
indeed can understand, what makes Walmart different from
any other big building full of retail goods, and it was
a long time before we realized that Google's search
engine was not only good, but oddly good.
--
  ----------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because 
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this 
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

http://www.jim.com/
     James A. Donald