Tulsa Commercial Real Estate Experts: J. Paul Getty's Thoughts About the Problems With Communism
by U.S. SBA Entrepreneur of the Year & Cofounder of Fears & Clark Tulsa Commercial Real Estate Group – Clay Clark
As a voracious reader of history, I believe (like most educated people) that we can truly learn about the future by studying the past. I don’t believe that we are forever locked in repeat cycle, but I do believe that studying history can show us numerous cyclical economic patterns and where many of the things we are dealing with today will take us tomorrow. Recently as I read J. Paul Getty’s (who was once the world’s wealthiest man) autobiography, I was taken aback by the chilling word’s he wrote about the growth of communism he was witnessing first hand during his time on the planet.
He wrote, “In those days, Russia was the only European country that required foriegners to have passports and visas for entry. I had both and went to St. Petersburg, where I remained while learning the rudiments of Russia & forming my first impressions which, overall, were not encouraging. A national intertia was apparent, due more to Tsarists bureacracy than Tsarist autocracy. The bureaucratic apparatus exerted a pernicious influence in every sphere of Russian life. It sapped the Empire’s vitality with its rules and regulations, its forms and stamps and seals and by the incredibly slow pace at which it operated. It is not, I might glumly parenthesize, too difficult to find dishearteningly close parallels in many countries in our present day and age.”
As I read this passage, I could not help but to think of how ridiculously slow our country is becoming because of our radical expansion of government’s size. As a business owner, we all know that you want to deal with the government as little as possible and not at all if at all possible. However, the problem is that they are beginning to suck the life out of the economy by entertering their fingers into nearly every area of our lives. For example…The other morning one of our team members was pulled over while driving one of our vehicles. Apparently the vehicle he was driving had expired tags. Because my companies own numerous vehicles, numerous houses and have numerous locations I do not personally drive ever vehicle each month. Because they are in multiple cities, I have to rely on our people on the ground to check the tags to see when they need to be updated. This in an of itself is an insane concept. Does your cell phone bill get charged without notice or reminder? Does any vendor you conduct business with other than the government not invoice you or remind you that a bill is due? No. However, the government does not remind you and then it fines you for knowing and many of the over-educated slow thinking idiots that work for the government love to remind us all that “ignorance is not an excuse.”
Moving on…to wrap up this little example of government encroachment. Apparently not having your tags updated is a more serious crime that being a illegal alien to this country, because they actually impounded the vehicle after sending 4 police cars on the scene to “secure the area.” As insane as it may seem, the government has successfully criminalized not knowing when your tags are up for renewal. Thus, I went to the tag agency and bought a new tag. Then I drove to the impound and had the vehicle taken out of the “bad vehicle lock up.” I then contacted a member of our team, who came to aid of vehicle and drove it back to the office.
Getting the tag was like waiting for a form letter to get sent back from your local congressman. It took forever and I wasn’t sure it was ever going to happen. At every tag agency (with an exception of few)”Big Momma” and the “Chain Smoker” seem to work there. These two geniuses work at a combined speed that is approaching a negative or “reverse mode.” Basically, they worked and worked by doing nothing. They did look up at me, but only after I had been there awhile and only after I had done some serious “excuse me, can I get some help heres?”
These incredible specimens then proceeded to give me all sorts of forms and documents that the “communist party of Russia” would have sincerely approved of. Sign this here. Show proof of this there. You must pay via money order. There is a “convenience fee” to pay via credit card, and you can only use this kind of credit card. Mail this in. We’ll male you that back in. Have this notorized (having them Stamped is the official Communist way of doing this). It is unbelievable. After being interrogated and having my day slowed to a near hault by the it-looks-like-we-ate-ourself team, I finally was allowed to leave with the items that I needed.
As government grows, more and more slow thinking people with big attitudes and small brains will continue to gain power over the business owners that drive this country. Our business owners are America’s “Golden Goose.” Without producers and business owners there would be no jobs, there would be no taxation and no one would have any money to pay for those glorious “double-taxation-validation” car tags. No sane entrepreneur would work in a tag agency or for the government because they would go crazy because of the glacier like speed at which it moves. Thus, more and more weak, slow and pathetically unmotivated people will seek employment with the government to fill the positions and government will grow slower and bigger. Communism here we come. So let’s all enjoy capitalism while we have it.
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