Prometheus 6

i'm trying to find a black/poor analogy for this. i know there is one on the tip of my tongue but i can't get to it. but there is definitely a third world analogy which is just a few levels up. name a situation in which the world bank/imf instituted structural adjustment rules or attempted to, in order to save a country from itself, and then pulled back because the country didn't want it (because the rules were too austere).

got it. there isn't one.

this is a game of chicken. the corps are able to buck the constraints because they believe that the alternative is too dire for their handlers to consider. so even though they're the ones getting bailed out, they feel they have the ability to dictate the terms.

It's the same kind of hubris which permits Carly Fiorina, a failed business executive, to exude contempt even for the candidates that she endorses. Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, wrote about the fate of capitalism as boiling down to a battle between shareholders and managers. The recent bailouts have brought this into sharp relief.

I think their attitude can be reduced to this: what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too.

Corporate people are often amoral borderline sociopaths. I think this is especially true in the Darwinian world of investment banking.

I don't think they're sociopaths. We dissociate cause from effect all the time. 

I think they see it pretty much like a chess master sees sacrificing a piece.

This is like seeing a starving, homeless man with a sign, begging for food or cash. Giving that man a newly bought sandwich out of sympathy, only to witness the man throw the sandwich on the ground in disgust because he "don't like cheese".

I don't think they're sociopaths. We dissociate cause from effect all the time. I think they see it pretty much like a chess master sees sacrificing a piece.

Sadly, shrewdness and amorality are not mutually exclusive attributes.

Sadly, shrewdness and amorality are not mutually exclusive attributes.

I offer Colin Powell and William Jefferson Clinton as stellar contemporary examples of this dictum.

Corporate people are often amoral borderline sociopaths.

I vote in favor of this. IMHO, it's ineluctably true.

I think this is especially true in the Darwinian world of investment banking.

To be fair, I'd recommend leaving Darwinian evolution out of it. Empathy, fellowship, morality, and solidarity exist--therefore, they must have evolved in some form. Their localized absence among corporate people, I would like to suggest, is unnatural. It reflects the suppression of evolution, or some institutional (as opposed to natural) selection.

Empathy, fellowship, morality, and solidarity exist--therefore, they must have evolved in some form. Their localized absence among corporate people, I would like to suggest, is unnatural.

There's no absence of that good stuff among corporate people. It's directed toward current players. You're expecting them to extend their morals to their tools.

You're expecting them to extend their morals to their tools.

I have hard time seeing me and those I love and like as tools.

You're expecting them to extend their morals to their tools.

I have hard time seeing me and those I love and like as tools.

THEY don't...

I'd ask if you can see them as seeing you and yours as tools, but that wouldn't help.

There's no absence of that good stuff among corporate people. It's directed toward current players. You're expecting them to extend their morals to their tools.

OK, P6, I get what you're saying. Nevertheless, I think somebody who behaves towards other humans--ANY other human--with the sort of disregard for livelihood, survival, etc. that is omnipresent in the corporate world, is defective. I've seen those photos of the SS staff at Auschwitz having company barbecues (yes, seriously) and really having a lot of fun playing together, but it doesn't make them normal.

I've seen those photos of the SS staff at Auschwitz having company barbecues (yes, seriously) and really having a lot of fun playing together, but it doesn't make them normal.

I've seen those pictures.

James, what the Nazis did was SO within the capabilities of humans...it was the culmination of a bunch of normal human activity. Their leaders were twisted than a bitch but the herd just did what herds do. Just like the corporate humans. 

Isn't that why Bush's Neo-Fundie power grab was so concerning? You still read Orcinus?

I'm with James on this tip. These folks appear and act like human beings but they are missing some key components such as empathy. Maybe I'm too soft. I'm still bothered by the fact that when I was four I threw an empty beer can (beer cans were much, much heavier then) at a sparrow and killed it. I didn't mean to kill it and I certainly thought the bird would fly away before the can hit it. Instead, the bird toppled over and died. No one saw me do it but I was deeply ashamed of myself. I still think about it even today.

James, what the Nazis did was SO within the capabilities of humans

Yes, but a lot of other folks, not enough though, did not act in this manner. Their behavior does not make them any less human but they are still lacking some qualities that we consider essential to being human.