To succeed in world domination without really trying, you've got to have three things: charisma, experience, and smarts. I don't have charisma.

There are many obstacles for the would-be dictator in the modern world; there's so many <i>stumbling blocks!</i> First of all you have to amass the troops, you have to find enough people crazy enough to follow you, you have to pay them all, you have to have ridiculously good insurance benefits to win their loyalty, but a coup is nearly inevitable. Then there's the pesky UN that can gather armies from across the entire globe; do you <i>know</i> how difficult it is to drag an army behind you across the whole damned <i>world?</i> There's always robot slaves, but the down payments nowadays, it's downright criminal.

And even if you take the globe (no, <i>when--</i> that's step four, an optimistic tyrant is a successful tyrant), even <i>when</i> you take the globe. There's instating and enforcing universal government, there's managing economy, there's the matter of handling trade and imports and exports in a world that is essentially now one Earth-sized country anyway. And inevitably some goodnik will go on up and get on strike and someone else goes on strike and then half of Namibia is in revolts; then you have to say, what do you want? and they say better welfare, and you say I'm giving out too much as it is, and they make a boohoo and soon you're an autocrat scurrying right and left paying out millions of dollars in vacation benefits while your tyranny's falling about your ears, and all you can think is, "This never would've happened if I had an ounce of charisma."