About the Greed of Many

It no longer suprises me when I see stories about a military Soldier hiding away hundreds of thousands of dollars. It pops up in our papers at least once every six months, inciting many people to discuss 'what they would have done differently'. It's no different from a person's compulsion to watch 'Cops' or other high speed chases. You fantasize about a life on the run, robbing banks, evading cops, and getting the girl in the end. It's why the Grand Theft Auto series is so popular.

The problem is that people are too greedy. I had this discussion with a friend of mine, who raised a very logical process in which he could get away with stealing money. If you raid Saddam Hussein's palace, break open a safe, and find $600,000 cash, the key to getting away with it is this: don't take it all.

Don't try and hide $600,000 in your room. It's almost impossible to hide that much cash from others in Iraq, and ABSOLUTELY NO METHOD of getting it all back to the States without getting caught.

You can't stick it in your ruck sack. You can't mail it home (because packages are checked thoroughly before they're sealed and sent). You can't bury it and return to it later.

The ONLY way to get it out of here is to send it $600 at a time in envelopes, and if you do the math, it's going to take you 1,000 envelopes to send it all home. And even if you do, like Captain Retard in the article did, you can't even deposit it into a bank. You can't flaunt it by buying a new car. You can't pay cash for your house. The only way to spend it is by spacing it out over many...many years.

And that's impossible. When you have cash sitting around your house that can't even collect interest in a bank, the average man cannot avoid spending so much that it raises the eyebrow of onlookers. It would take a Superman, or Übermensch, to accomplish such a feat. It wouldn't even be that fun.

So like I was saying, if you find $600,000 in Iraq, what I'd suggest is that you pocket at the max $10,000 and leave the rest of it there. It is more pain than pleasure after that point, because you'll be sweating bullets for years trying to hide it away.

And if you aren't sweating bullets constantly, it's because you're an idiot. And you really want your face to be on the front page of the next Army Times.