Slaying dragons

A month or so ago, I saw some article where some billionaire said something like, “You peasants can’t understand how tough it is to be rich.” I mean, that wasn’t what was actually said, but that seemed to be their real thoughts.  I read that, and I thought, You know, in days of yore, there would be brave knights who would come and slay the foul beasts that hoarded gold and laid waste to the land. 

I liked that image, and for a couple of days I tried to figure out some story I could write with it.  While I didn’t find a story idea, I did realize what I would do if I had a few million dollars I didn’t know what else to do with.  I would create an organization, The Knights of … some term that hasn’t already been taken by some other organization or metal band.  This organization would hire a bunch of investigative journalists, forensic accountants, and a ton of lawyers.  And the point of the organization would be to … metaphorically slay dragons.  Probably in a monthly, online newsletter.

Are you some company who doesn’t pay your employees overtime?  Do you use some accounting slight-of-hand to underreport your profits to the IRS?  Do you use your obscene wealth to basically buy a politician?  Our job would be to make sure everyone knows that. 

Now we wouldn’t just repeat baseless gossip.  The key point for the organization would be that everything we report would have been double and triple confirmed to the point it would hold up in a court of law.  And if the gossip was some company was doing something illegal but we couldn’t prove it, we would come out and say that we were unable to prove it.  I guess I should say we wouldn’t slay all the dragons, just the ones we could prove were committing crimes.  And I bet, most dragons would still be upset by that.  Curious.