Life is not fair. That is a given. That is our starting point. As a general rule of thumb (and to be sure, things can be different but usually aren't) -- based on my thirty years of corporate experience -- personal and corporate ethics and integrity collapses under the weight of personal and corporate narcissisism -- which means primarily the influence of money and its division. Money corrupts, plain and simple. Money tarnishes everything it touches. It poisions human relationships and human realms of activity...
1. Ethical sports becomes narcissistically corrupted sports...
2. Ethical business becomes narcissistically corrupted business...
3. Ethical politics becomes narcissistically corrupted politics...
4. Ethical science and medicine becomes narcissistically corrupted science and mediicne...
5. Everything money touches in a significant way, it spoils...it batters ethics, fairness, and integrity into submission...
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So what do you do about this? Do you just watch and let this all happen? Or do you try to do something about it? Do you give up on Capitalism altogether -- as Marx did (not that the people who built political and economic structures from Marx's ideas created anything better -- but that lies more on Lenin's and Stalin's and the leaders of China's shoulders; not Marx's) -- or do you work, perhaps hopelessly, at trying to build a more ethical, humanistic-existential (as opposed to narcissistic, manipulative, exploitive) form of Capitalism?
These are important -- potentially life-altering -- questions that dog us as we move more and more into the 21st century, knowing all too well and personally that we are being 'had' at the gas pumps -- that some small segment of very powerful people out there is/are filling their pockets with our hard-earned and hard-to-come-by money as we drive by, fill up, sit by, and seemingly hopelessly watch our evening news and read our morning newspaper as nothing is done about this market manipulation and exploitation of our perhaps way too vitally important North American commodity -- oil and gas.
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The 'ethics' of Capitalism was supposed to be governed by the 'free market'. But is there any such thing as a free market anymore? What is the percentage of 'free markets' out there as opposed to 'manipulated markets'?
In the case of oil, where is the market being altered and/or mnaipulated such that we are getting these skyrocketing prices? China -- and its rush towards greater industrialism, capitalism, and consumerism? India? The Middle East? The last article I read pointed to a huge 'over-consumption' of oil in places like Saudia Arabia and Dubai where the price of oil is still very cheap. What are Americans going to do -- sit around and blame the Arabs for their price of gas problems -- or are there more pertinent problems much closer to home?
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To be continued...
