Slowly Realizing how Shallow and Ill-Conceived his Rules are

Over the course of a few years, Mike realizes that those changes he made to how companies work actually completely destroyed the economy.

To begin with, Mike was careful to make the rules New Rules, meaning they applied immediately, not retroactively. As a result, while he looks around, Mike doesn't realize the problems he has just caused the world, but which will immediately start to fester into untold suffering. Satisfied with his changes so far, Mike slipped the Rulebook back into its hiding place and returned to his job. However, much to his dismay, when he checked again a few minutes later, the Rulebook was gone, replaced with a fancy looking parchment letter, sealed with wax, addressed on the front to 'Rulebook User'. He quickly opens the letter to read it.

'Dear User,

As a whimsical and all powerful controller of creation, I got bored of being stuffed in your hiding spot, unused for so long. So, I left this world and went to another I like more. Good Luck in your future endeavors!

Best Wishes

The Rulebook'

"...Huh? Is... Is the Rulebook sentient?" Mike says, bewildered, as the letter suddenly disintegrates into a fine powder, carried away by a sudden light gust of air. Regardless, he gets to his job and enjoys it. It's so nice being paid a lot more and having a lot more help on the floor, so Mike began to enjoy his minimum effort job quite thoroughly, as he worked day after day in his favorite conceivable workplace.

However, as the days turn into weeks, then months, the effects of his wish are starting to take effect. Unfortunately, Mike doesn't really understand the economy very well and has a very shallow idea of what a 'Company Owner' or 'Company Investor' really are, nor does he understand profit margins. For instance, the Supermarket he works for, SuperGroce, has a little over 3000 stores around the country, as a chain serving every state in the US and even some parts of Canada. On average, each store has 30 employees to cover all shifts, stocking, cleaning, registers, and so on and so forth. Mike's store is particularly tiny and originally had 5 people working the 1000square foot shop, only to try to start hiring to three times that limit.

But herein lies the problem. At that rate, you have 90,000 employees you have to pay. To triple that count while paying people significantly more puts the company at far overpaying for labor. The solution then would be to raise prices, but Mike's rule prevents that. Instead, while the staff are getting paid more, that 20% of pre-expenses income is expensed towards labor. The grocery store, in order to be competitive with other grocery stores, only has a 2% profit margin after all expenses are paid. So when that 20% of pre-expense income on labor is increased to over 80% with full hiring and full payment that the Rule seeks to enact, the grocery store finds itself far in the red.

And, as a company far in the red, which is rapidly seeing its debts grow, the owner is losing massive amounts of dollars every day, despite the fact that, to Mike's amusement, the owner is **** to work 8 hours in the store as well, rather than working in corporate where he should be. If we look at other companies, their investors are starting to pull out en masse, as stock prices take a dive and investors don't want to work at every company they invest in, in addition to their actual job that earns their initial capital to invest; after all, more than 99% of investors are mere stock owners, who don't own enough stock to profit in a good stock market, let alone the untold losses being caused by EVERY stock dropping (because you only profit if the company's stock value goes up, which is supposed to be directly tied to assets and believable promises about future revenues).

Eventually, the bank comes to collect from SuperGroce's owner, who is now billions in debt, and the entirety of every SuperGroce nationwide is seized by the bank, so they can sell off assets to recoup their costs. Mike and all his friends are out of a job for a few days, but they quickly find another company with open spots to leach off of. Of course, with each wave of closing companies, the workers disperse and try to find new companies to work for, which thanks to the Rules creates a huge burden on each company.

Soon, within a year, every company and business in the country has collapsed, unemployment is literally nearing 100%, if we exclude government jobs because the government can print infinite money. Most people are slowly starving, or barely subsisting. Thanks to the total collapse of the economy, the government took over the production of the most basic things, like food, clean water, clothes, and homes, but the incompetency of government action combined with how quick they needed to implement things to prevent mass starvation and **** led to massive amounts of corruption and inefficiency, leading to many millions still dying from lack of food or water.

In one of the government run starvation camps, Mike sits there barely moving, hoping to preserve what little energy his starving body has left while he waits for the next round of food to be given out. As the food is passed out, Mike looks out passed the fence and sees something: Tanks, APC, and other military vehicles. There's some commotion from the camp, but given that the only people armed here are armed to protect the food stockpiles, they very quickly give in and surrender to these forces. That's when you find out that an international coalition has determined that the US government is no longer legitimate and seeks to **** its own people, while trying to cover it up, via intentional slow mass starvation. Most of the coalition is Americans, especially those who controlled large international businesses, who fled the tyranny of the government rules about employment that caused this entire issue.

Soon, under this coalition of American patriots and business owners, a new US with far more robust protections for the free market, in addition to recognizing the progress of rights that has been made up to now, has been set up. There's some transitory issue period, but after ten year, the country has mostly recovered to the state it was before Mike ruined everything with the Rulebook.

And where is Mike, you might ask?

Well, after the country was re-established and stabilized, he found out just how much suffering he caused, not only in the US through direct deaths and starvation, but world wide from the massive economic collapse, he committed suicide. He simply couldn't live with the guilt that his greed and ignorance caused the deaths of more people than literally Hitler.