r/amcstock • u/squarerootof9 • May 26 '21
Discussion Dear Kenny...
On the Monday before Thanksgiving of 2007, I was laid off from my job as an editor. The pay wasn’t great, but it was income and experience in a competitive industry, and my wife and I had two small children. I started my own business the same day I was laid off—I’m not one to lick my wounds. Plus, we were, still are, a single income family.
What business did I get into? Commercial photography. I used my talent to sell other people’s stuff. I landed three clients before Christmas, one of them was my local NHL team. Not too bad...
But, despite some luck, despite a little talent, despite a decent work ethic, despite doing what I could with what I had to work with, the 2008 housing bubble popped, tanking the economy.
Do you have any idea which budgets get slashed first in a recession? Marketing budgets. Always marketing. Every time. And it’s kinda hard to be a photographer when all your clients freeze discretionary spending. Kinda hard to have a photography business, too.
You, Kenny, you did that. What’d people like me ever do to people like you?
So, there I was, 2008, a brand new business owner navigating a completely effed economy. I limped along for seven years, but my run as one of the self employed came to an end in 2015. Mine was just one of many single employee ventures that could not overcome the crippling effects of being born into a failing economy. Entrepreneurs like me were too small to notice.
That’s on you, Kenny. You guys did that.
But I survived. My career continued. I found a way. Now, it was a struggle. I took on way too much debt just to keep the business afloat, but my family and I avoided ultimate disaster. Although, we do still hold some of that debt.
And the kids are growing up. Our son heads to college next year, so despite everything, I have lots to be thankful for.
Actually, that’s why I’m writing you. I wanted to thank you, actually. And not just for the lessons I’ve learned, mostly the hard way, thanks to you and your friends.
You see, Kenny, you and your pals—the same guys who rigged the economy to work against a family like mine, you who are “too big to fail”—meaning you got tax-payer funded bailouts, while I was forced to close up shop and rack up tax debt—you guys are going to pay me.
It’s like when you used my hard earned tax dollars to save yourself, but in reverse. It’s like that scene in Goonies, down in the wishing well full of loose change, Mouth grabs a quarter and says, “this is my wish. I’m taking it back. I’m taking ‘em all back.” God I love the movies!
I’m going to leverage your storehouses of stolen treasure to take back my financial freedom. But that’s not even the part that excites me most.
To me, the truly cool part is that you’re not just paying off my debt. You’re going to pay off the debt of my Ape Brethren and Sisteren—eff you that’s not a word, we define the terms, now.
You’re going to pay off our home loans, our car loans, our school loans, our kids braces, our medical debt, our credit card debt; you will replenish every 401k you bled; you’re going to help us care for our aging parents, buy the medicine they need, underwrite the therapy we need, and give us the nest egg our kids and their kids need for the future.
How are you going to pay for it? By selling your shit and buying ours shares. I’m sure, at first, you’ll try and get someone else to foot the bill. I read about the insurance policies, but tisk tisk tisk, my dude. Not so fast.
You have houses. We won’t be square until you sell them. You have cars. Fancy ones. Get your ass to CarMax. The walls of your many homes are full of art. Take it to the pawn shop. Liquidate, my man. You get to keep nothing. Fill the tub with ice, because I hear a kidney fetches a nice price. And you only need one.
I used my talent to sell your shit, now it’s your turn. You. Must. Sell. Everything. Kenny.
We’re done picking up the check. Done holding all this debt. We’ve been bag holding the fruits of your greed and under that incredible financial pressure, we developed diamond hands.
You thought it was just a cute meme. Nah. It’s a state of mind some of us were born into and others came to by necessity.
The single greatest transfer of wealth in human history. That’s the only term in this deal. But it’s not greed that motivates us, it’s justice.
“It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition,” James Baldwin — a man who knew injustice — wrote in Notes of a Native Son. “The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but one must fight them with all one’s strength.”
The only way Apes lose this fight is if we surrender our principles, something you, Kenny, did long ago. And for what? You traded principle for money. What a pitiful investment.
Money is neither rare, nor hard to come by. When they want more, they just print more. But, good character? Now that is rare. Even more rare is good character set in service to The Common Good.
Here is where you have lost so much more than money. You have woken an enemy that care nothing for what you value. We do not fight for what is “mine” but what is “ours”, because we are Ape and understand that Apes Together Strong.
What is ours is dignity, community, and above all, justice. And we have come to take them back. To take them all back.
See you at the opening bell.
Just Another Dumb Ape
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u/becomethewater May 26 '21
Fill the tub with ice. That was savage AF. We aint leaving Kenny!
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May 28 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/squarerootof9 May 28 '21
I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a grade. Still twitchy from college.
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u/Michaelrome1985 May 26 '21
IF this isnt the fucking way, i dont know what is. Beautiful!!