THE BUSINESS FRONT.
Now we enter the territory where things can become genuinely sophisticated. Import & export. Freight & forwarding. Automobile trading. Real estate/Properties. Construction.
Hospitality. Fashion. Luxury retail. Entertainment.
All perfectly legitimate industries. And that is precisely the point. Because a legitimate industry can, in the wrong hands, potentially be abused to create the appearance of legitimate wealth. Some businesses are completely genuine. Some may contain a mixture of legitimate & illicit funds.
Some may allegedly exist primarily to create legitimacy. And some people simply understand that owning a respectable business is one of the greatest social costumes ever invented. Give a man an office. Give him a showroom. Give him a company registration. Give him a fleet. Give him properties. Give him employees. Give him a public profile. Give him philanthropy. And watch society’s attitude change.
Yesterday: “Who is this fellow?”
Today: “That is a very successful businessman.”
Tomorrow: “That man is a billionaire.”
And eventually: “We must respect him.”
That transformation can happen frighteningly quickly.
Because society has a peculiar relationship with wealth. We tend to ask where poor people got their money. We tend to ask how middle-class people became rich. But once somebody becomes sufficiently wealthy, something strange happens: We begin admiring the money instead of interrogating it.
The mansion becomes evidence of success. The cars become evidence of success. The jewellery becomes evidence of success. The expensive holidays become evidence of success. The celebrity friendships become evidence of success. The philanthropy becomes evidence of character.
And the business, whatever it may be, becomes the explanation for everything else. That is how a public identity can become more powerful than the original source of the money. But there is still one problem.
When the money is truly colossal, even legitimate-looking businesses may not be able to absorb all of it. So what happens when you have too much money? You spend it.
You spend it. And when you have far too much? You spend it loudly.
Very loudly.
That is where the laulau begins.
TO BE CONTINUED…
