Think you’re the mayor of a sleepy little town called K-Town, population 6,618, and your citizens love ice cream. You know that because you know your people, and besides, you’re a citizen yourself and you love ice cream too. Luckily there’s an ice cream factory nearby and it sells ice cream at a dollar a cone. It’s making a whole lot of money, that ice cream factory, because like I said, the citizens of K-Town are crazy about ice cream.
One day one of your citizens, a little man, wants to open his own ice cream parlour in your city. He has a deal with the ice cream factory. He buys the ice cream at 90 cents per cone from the factory and he wants to sell it at a dollar a cone. It’s the same ice cream, and it’s the same price. The only difference is that the ice cream from the ice cream parlour helps the little man to make a living. Will you as the mayor of K-Town allow that?
Of course you won’t.
Because, so goes your reasoning, who knows how many others there are who in the end will all want to have their own ice cream parlour? We don’t want to end up with 6,000 ice cream parlours in our city, do we? Imagine that! Thousands of people making a few extra cents that make their lives a little less miserable. No, we can’t allow that.
The truth is, most people don’t want their own ice cream parlour. They just want ice cream. And they’ll happily support whoever provides it. But you, the mayor, think it’s too much to ask from his citizens to support other citizens, even if the price of the ice cream is the same. So you decide to not allow the new ice cream parlour. The money that would have supported the little man now goes directly to the ice cream factory which belongs to a big corporation. The corporation will get even richer. The little man will continue to struggle like he always has.
You think you’re a good mayor, and you support the big corporations because after all they provide us with everything. They provide food, housing, energy. They provide the cars we drive in and the roads we drive on. They also provide the chemicals that pollute our water and our air, they provide the politicians that they bribe and they provide the weapons that kill our brothers and sons in the wars that they pay for. What they don’t provide is health care for the poorest of the poor, and that’s why you also support charities that help those who can’t help themselves because the corporations destroyed their lives.
You support the very rich and you support the very poor. But the little man that struggles every day to make a living? No. He’s too mediocre, too middle-class, just like all the rest of your citizens. And heaven forbid that citizens support other citizens, even if it doesn’t cost them a cent. That would be like communism, wouldn’t it?
The question is, are you even aware of the consequences of your political decisions? If you are then you’re not a good mayor because you favor the big corporations over the little man. And if you’re not aware of the consequences… well, then you’re not a good mayor anyway.
My guess is you’re not fully aware of the consequences of your decisions. But that may be because you’re only half as old as the little man in this story, and maybe you have no idea what it means to make a living because it’s daddy who’s still paying your bills.
But we will all live happily ever after. Some more and some less.
[EDIT: more than a year later I wonder if anybody ever noticed that this story wasn't really about ice cream but about posting affiliate links to LJ communities. I guess not.]
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In other news, the doorbell rang a while ago, quite unexpectedly, and guess who it was? It was Keito! Okay, not in person but, like, on the poster they sold at the Tokyo Dome concert. I ordered it back in December and now it’s finally here. My, he’s not looking happy. He’s not exactly looking unhappy either, but it’s a very solemn look he’s got on his face there. I like it though. If you had asked me would you rather have a poster of Keito smiling or not smiling I probably would have said smiling, but now that he’s hanging there on my wall looking down at me so earnestly I think it’s pretty cool. I’m not a big fan of turtleneck sweaters, but I absolutely adore that velvet jacket.In more other news, Dreams come true PV preview = ♥. It’s in the sidebar menu along with pre-order links (support the little man!). At first glance the PV may seem a little boring with all of them just standing in a room. But oh my, there’s so many of them (as if they weren’t enough before), and they’re doing so many things. LOL at Yabu doing ikebana, what’sですよ！？！. Can it get any more random? Yay for Keito on a bike though. Hm, in the Decasporta CM it was a motorcycle, now it’s a bike. Somebody in Johnny’s likes seeing Keito on wheels, and so do I. Oh and how he waves into the camera like a shy little fawn. ♥ As for the song, omg, JUMP have a new song and I really really love it. A hundred times better than Chance to Change.
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