Stranger in a Strange Land

previously unformulated law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law.' But, Captain, real wealth, on the scale that causes its owner to hire a battery of finaglers to hold down his taxes, would ground you just as certainly as resigning would."
                "Why should it? I would put it all in bonds and just clip coupons."
                "Would you? Not if you were the sort of person who acquires great wealth in the first place. Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of singlem1~ed devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money, to the utter exclusion of all other interests. They say that the age of opportunity has passed. Nonsense! Seven out of ten of the wealthiest men on this planet started life without a shilling_-and there are plenty more such strivers on the way up. Such people are not stopped by high taxation nor even by socialism; they simply adapt themselves to new rules and presently they change the rules. But no premiere ballerina ever works harder, nor more narrowly, than a man who acquires riches. Captain, that's not your style; you don't want to make money, you simply want to have money-in order to spend it."
                "Correct, sir! Which is why I can't see why you should want to take Mike's wealth away from him."
                "Because Mike doesn't need it and it would cripple him worse than any physical handicap. Wealth-great wealth-is a curse . . . unless you are devoted to the money making game for its own sake. And even then it has serious drawbacks."
                "Oh, nonsense, Jubal, you talk like a harem guard trying to convince a whole man of the advantages of being a eunuch. Pardon me."
                "Very possibly." agreed Jubal, "and perhaps for the same reason; the human mind's ability to rationalize its own shortcomings into virtues is unlimited, and I am no exception. Since I, like yourself, sir, have no interest in money other than to spend it, there has never been the slightest chance that I would acquire any significant degree of wealth just enough for my vices. Nor any teal danger that I would fail to scrounge that modest amount, since anyone with the savvy not to draw to a small pair can always manage to feed his vices, whether they be tithing or chewing betel nut. But great wealth? You saw that performance this morning. Now answer me truthfully. Do you think I could have revised it slightly so that I myself acquired all that plunder-become its sole manager and de-facto owner while milking off for my own use any income I cared to name-and still have rigged the other issues so that Douglas would have supported the outcome? Could I have done that, sir? Mike trusts me; I am his water brother. Could I have stolen his fortune and so arranged it that the government in the person of Mr. Douglas would have condoned it?"
                "Uh ... damn you, Jubal, I suppose you could have."
                "Most certainly I could have. Because our sometimes estimable Secretary General is no more a money-seeker than you are. His drive is political power-a drum whose beat I do not hear. Had I guaranteed to Douglas (oh, gracefully, of course-there is decorum even among thieves) that the Smith estate would continue to bulwark his administration, then I would have been left undisturbed to do as I liked with the income and had my acting guardianship made legal."
                Jubal shuddered. "I thought that I was going to have to do exactly that, simply to protect Mike from the vultures gathered around him-and I was panic-stricken. Captain, you obviously don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. It is not a fat purse and time to spend it. Its owner finds himself beset on every side, at every hour, wherever he goes, by persistent pleaders, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious of honest friendship-indeed honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could have been his friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.
                "Worse yet, his life and the lives of his family are always in danger. Captain, have your daughters ever been threatened with kidnapping?"
                "What? Good Lord, I should hope not!"
                "If you possessed the wealth Mike had thrust on him, you would have those