Business, Steemit, TRON, "Making Deals" and Memories of Childhood

My dad was CEO of a manufacturing company.

When I was a kid, I would sometimes go with him to "The Office" in the morning, because he'd take half days and we'd leave the factory after lunch and head to the zoo, or the Natural History Museum or something interesting to a 9-year old kid.

It was the late 1960's. Things were different, then. Or were they?

What story are we writing?

I remember hearing (and being told) that my dad was "A Businessman" and even though he had the factory, his work was actually this rather nebulous thing called "Doing Business."

This — to my very young eyes — seemed to consist primarily of groups of men-in-suits getting together in closed rooms where they would push lots papers around, then sign the papers, and then have rounds of self-congratulatory cigars for what they had accomplished. As I said, this was almost 50 years ago.

The "Deals" they made produced nothing, and most of the time it felt they they didn't result in anything being produced and ultimately the only observable thing that happened was a sense of celebration at some papers moving around a desk, as a result of which millions of dollars changed hands, with no positive visible effect on the greater sphere of life. On top of which, these "deals" often seemed to totally disregard the fact that any actual functional application of what was in agreed to papers negatively affected the world and thousands of people.

The horizon is foggy

It was basically about a handful of people getting very rich, at the expense of (or certainly with Zero benefit to) a large number of people and resources.

Moral of the story (I suppose) is that a lot of business deals aren't necessarily made because someone enters an agreement because they have some "Great Vision" for the asset they are acquiring... sometimes the only "vision" is of the $100 million (or whatever) they get to take away from the table and go somewhere else with... and may the rest of the pieces (and in many areas of business, the lives of thousands of people) fall where they will.

Which brings me to the whole TRON/Steemit Ned Scott/Justin Sun debacle, which has everyone on edge and atwitter.

Perhaps with good reason.

It's feeling a bit wintry...

Does this "Deal" actually serve any purpose other than to have a bunch of paperwork and money change hands, with complete and utter disregard for the way it may (or may not) affect thousands of other users and investors?

Or are we simply looking at the 2020 version of "suited men in a room smoking cigars," at the end of which a handful of people congratulate themselves on having fat bank accounts, and everyone else — on BOTH sides of the equation — crawl away as losers?

I have been considering my stake here. I'm not talking about a few thousand Steem... I'm talking about thousands of hours spent creating 100% original content, resulting in close to two million words of creative writing... deposited into a blockchain based network I was assured was pretty well immutable and permanent.

Stay calm, and carry on...

Thing is, I have been part of this blogging gig for a really long time.

And pretty much EVERY. SINGLE. VENUE. (of more than 50!) has been erased by some kind of misfortune, bankruptcy, merger or another top-level clusterfuck.

Is that what we're staring in the eyes, here?

Makes me glad that I have been burned so often by lost content that I went "Blockchain-schmockchain" when I was told about the way decentralized hosting works... and still saved copies of every single post on a thumbdrive. Because... why? Because ultimately (sad to say) you can't trust anyone other than yourself.

I really, really, really hope I'm wrong and that we're not all just tiny pawn bystanders in someone's cash grab... someone's deal.

Thanks for reading!

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(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.) Created at 20200214 17:02 PST 1199

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