10
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
can get such a huge empire as Russia to make tribute payments to us every
year without any military intervention at all.”
Heitzman Senior took the fireplace tongs, poked the logs and then si-
lently poured a glass of light wine for himself and his son. He took a small
sip, and only then did he continue:
“It isn’t that I developed some kind of operation. The capital I control
only allows me to give orders. Others carry them out. Many analysts, presid-
ents, and geniuses in the governments of various countries would be quite
surprised to learn that it’s not their actions that determine the current state
of their countries, but my wishes.
“The polytechnic centers, economics institutes, think tanks and govern-
mental structures of many countries don’t realize that they work strictly
along courses developed by my divisions. And that these courses are few in
number. For example, Russia’s entire socio-economic policy and military
doctrine are defined and controlled by one division with a staff of four psy-
chologists. Each of the four has four secretaries. None of them knows about
what the others are doing.
“I’ll show you how we manage to control things. It’s a simple enough pro-
cess. But first, John, you need to understand the real laws of economics, the
ones you’ll never hear about from the academics. They simply have no idea
they exist. The law is this: within a democratic society, the presidents, gov-
ernments, banks, and the large and small business owners of all countries
work only for one business owner located at the top of the economic pyr-
amid. They all worked for my father. Now they work for me, and before long
they’ll be working only for you.”
John Heitzman looked at his father and couldn’t fully take in what he’d
said. Certainly, he knew his father was rich. But here he wasn’t talking
simply about wealth, but about the super power that he, John, would inherit.
He was having a hard time fully comprehending this incredible piece of in-
formation. How was it possible that within a free, democratic society, every-
one, starting with the president and ending with hundreds of thousands of
large and small firms – all of them independent legal entities – were essen-
tially working for one person, his father?
