Ray Mann

Imagine you’re a conman. You’ve said for years you have MAGIC BEANS. You’ve shown lots of REALLY BIG normal beans that you made in your lab. “Almost there!” you say—over and over. Now, you have *almost* convinced the villagers to give you TWO TRILLION DOLLARS. But while the beans keep getting bigger. No magic yet… What do you do? That money is SO CLOSE. “I know!” you think, “instead of MAGIC beans, lets’s make them KILLER BEANS.” So you pump up your beans up SUPER BIG and you say: “I’m sorry, but these BEANS ARE GETTING BIGGER ON THEIR OWN!” You threaten people that if they don’t give you the money, the beans may get into the WRONG HANDS. They might get BIGGER THAN THE EARTH! The villagers, aghast, run to and fro arguing whether the beans are going to kill everyone or make them all rich. “Well, either way,” the idiots in the village conclude, “We’d better give him the money.”