#363. 51% Vote

Ever since he came back home, he’s seen his face on TV. He hated all the headlines and attention. He’d been there before. It didn’t work the first time. The first time he made headlines he was only a kid. Shortly after his 18th birthday, he made his first million dollars.
Suddenly he went from the suburban kid too smart for his own good to an international celebrity. Soon headlines like “Teenager becomes millionaire months after graduation” were plastered everywhere he went. Soon, influential people wanted to interview Thomas Hayes.
Just a few months before the money and the fame, Thomas was just a kid. He was always smarter than everybody else. By the age of 5 he had already learned 5 languages, and by the age of 18, he knew 20. He taught himself how to code, and quickly became one of the best coders of all time.
Born in the suburbs of Texas, Hayes never lived without. His parents, both constantly busy with their professions, got him whatever he wanted, trying to buy his love. Thomas was gifted and a natural entrepreneur, but he was arrogant.
He wasn’t ready for the money and the fame. His ego became more inflated than the Goodyear blimp. One day as he walked down the street in clothes worth more than a car, a homeless man stopped him.
“Can you spare some change, sir?” the homeless man said.
“Why?” Thomas replied, coldly.
“I need money for food and water, I’m starving and thirsty.”
“That’s not my problem!” Why don’t you get up and make money?”
“I apply to jobs every day, but nobody will hire me.”
“I’m tired of you guys! It’s like an infection. You guys are everywhere asking me for money. Just stop bothering me! I don’t owe you anything!”
The argument was plastered all over the news. Thomas Hayes went from America’s Boy Wonder to a social pariah. Everybody hated him: the rich, poor, and middle class of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities hated him. Hayes couldn’t come out of his house without something being yelled or thrown at him.
The death threats were the last straw. Thomas looked himself in the mirror one last time before he would disappear.
What’s wrong with you?
He thought, his self respect fading into nothingness.
He got on a boat, untraceable by modern technology. He put the rest of his money in a bank account with the most secure electronic defenses ever conceived. He went away from years to a far away place without Internet access.
When he arrived back on the scene, he wasn’t the same teen that berated a homeless man.
He had made a trip to a clean and pure village. A village where everybody worked and everybody got an equal share. There was no poverty, no jealousy, no hunger, no war. The spotlight was on love and prosperity rather than greed and cruelty. Thomas was amazed. Could such a primitive and foreign society be so morally upright? Why can’t we be like that.
So Thomas started his mission. He quickly made his several billion dollars and spent all his money buying up 51% of the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world. Then he went to work.
At every board meeting, Thomas forced the company to sell everything at cost (including cost for employee salaries and upkeep). Of course there was backlash, but he hired a new CEO that shared his vision. He bought out anybody else that opposed him. Soon, almost everybody could afford the medicine they needed. But there was backlash.
Good God, Thomas didn’t see the backlash coming.

