Re-rethinking profit
Jan. 11th, 2011 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerOh, what was that line? Oh, yes:
SAM: (on protecting oil companies from being justifiably sued when the cheap tankers they choose to buy break down and spill oil all over the ecosphere) They're our client. They don't lose legal protection because they make a lot of money.
JOSH: I can't believe no-one ever wrote a folk song about that.
(The West Wing, "In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen", part one)
I may write it myself. I never knew big business was so philanthropic, but apparently it is. Or maybe it's just true that whatever you attack, someone will leap to its defence.
Actually, I'm not going to pursue this. I've done religion and politics already this year, I think I can excuse myself from economics for a while. Where I see blatant avarice and dishonesty exposed in dozens of cases of profiteering, insider dealing, grossly inflated salaries and bonuses, speculation on subprime mortgages that--I thought--caused the banking collapse and huge government bailouts, and all made possible by the existence of huge non-human entities without conscience or morality or any urge other than to amass more and more and more profit without end...maybe it really is all just the way things are supposed to be, and if it wasn't then all of us would be even poorer than we are. I don't know. I'm just an unemployed writer, and I've never been above the bottom of the heap so I don't know what things look like from up there.
Sorry.
SAM: (on protecting oil companies from being justifiably sued when the cheap tankers they choose to buy break down and spill oil all over the ecosphere) They're our client. They don't lose legal protection because they make a lot of money.
JOSH: I can't believe no-one ever wrote a folk song about that.
(The West Wing, "In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen", part one)
I may write it myself. I never knew big business was so philanthropic, but apparently it is. Or maybe it's just true that whatever you attack, someone will leap to its defence.
Actually, I'm not going to pursue this. I've done religion and politics already this year, I think I can excuse myself from economics for a while. Where I see blatant avarice and dishonesty exposed in dozens of cases of profiteering, insider dealing, grossly inflated salaries and bonuses, speculation on subprime mortgages that--I thought--caused the banking collapse and huge government bailouts, and all made possible by the existence of huge non-human entities without conscience or morality or any urge other than to amass more and more and more profit without end...maybe it really is all just the way things are supposed to be, and if it wasn't then all of us would be even poorer than we are. I don't know. I'm just an unemployed writer, and I've never been above the bottom of the heap so I don't know what things look like from up there.
Sorry.