What If?

 What if I had gone long on oil stocks at the beginning of May 2005 and had the brains to hold them until Hurricane Katrina struck?

I'd be a lot richer than I am now, and would be able to afford a Christmas trip back to Hong Kong living in a six-star hotel for three weeks.

 What if all salaries were suddenly adjusted so they were based entirely on how disgusting the job was?

Jobs in chicken slaughterhouses and such would be highly sought after, filled not by illegal immigrants but by former corporate attorneys and investment bankers willing to do whatever it took to continue living opulently.

Their cushy former jobs, requiring expertise but now drawing mere subsistence pay, would remain largely unfilled, resulting in a fundamental change in how the Western world does business: The peddling of influence would become obsolete, as would the system of earning capital through the manipulation of money rather than the creation of goods or services.

Litigation would be replaced by common-sense conciliation and compromise. A Golden Age of Business would dawn. Meanwhile, those with the most money would continue to rise to the top of society, meaning the typical job one holds before becoming president would not be governor or senator, but something like "deputy operator in charge of New York Manhatten feces clog clearance."

 What if the universe were controlled by a just God who openly rewarded virtue and punished evil, in this life?

The existence of God would be manifest, and everyone would Believe. People would begin being virtuous in the hope of achieving material success and avoiding misfortune. The cynicism behind this behaviour would therefore transform every selfless act into a selfish one, meaning God would begin punishing the virtuous, resulting in a backlash of illicit, greedy, rapacious activities. The very notions of good and evil would blend and merge and become indistinguishable, throwing all societies into an existential crisis. Only the completely sociopathic -- those driven entirely by self-interest, without any moral compass or compunction -- would be able to navigate this chaos and prosper, and they would rule the world.

Alas, things wouldn't be all that different, in the end.