>>> Our capitalist system does not rely on people doing what is right. It instead assumes people are basically selfish, even evil,
>>> What makes predatory conduct wrong is the fact that the conduct in question is not profit-maximizing,
Gerry - yuck!
Even Adam Smith would be dismayed at these statements. Though you could take some of what he wrote out of context to support them.
Markets depend on prices being optimised for efficient distribution of resources. However, society cannot continue to exist if all it's members have the philosophy you outline above. Most people do the right thing, even more than right, most of the time. If this were not true nothing would ever get done. We would spend all our time plotting and robbing.
It is true that politicians, corporate leaders and ladder climbers have a weak ethical structure. So we have to rein them in. Especially now, as Americas predator/producer ratio has gotten dangerously high. In Adam Smith's time, the vast majority of the population was scolded every Sunday, or more frequently, by their bishops, priests and clergymen to eschew greed and help their neighbors and be good citizens. While impulses may have been often otherwise, this no doubt had an effect, as no-one wanted to become the local paragon of greed. Even a truly greedy man like Carnegie would in the last third of his life devote himself to giving something back to the world. Adam Smith and the others of his day could never have imagined the (national internal, not international) consequences of unbridled capitalism in a society with no moral foundation whatever. For which, one really has to look at today's Russia.
Sadly, all that was based on a view of the physical universe that science has destroyed, and we have not been able to replace that portion of the societal structure. Yet, that is, for a lot of folks are working on that project, in places far from Silicon Valley, Washington DC, and Wall Street, in spirit if not in miles.
>>> So what is it that Gates' evasion is supposed to prove?
I guess you are just testing to see if we are conscious here Gerry.
The point of course is that most people viewing the tape segments have reacted as if they were watching their 14 year old explain why they got home three hours late. The implication leapt to being that everyone was really in the know, and everything MSFT did was deliberate policy, directed from the top. We are tempted to these conclusions because Gates is so transparently bad at testimony that we will make the unjustified leap to the idea that he is dissembling constantly. I guess that's what happens to you when you have 80 billion dollars - never having to make excuses convincingly. I see this as a major blow to MSFT.
Chaz |
