Ed,
The Weick household ought to count itself lucky! If, instead, you'd
dropped your wallet while buying a bag of nails in a D-I-Y
superstore, then the chances are that you'd not have got your wallet
back. See <WalletTest.com>.
Keith
At 12:02 29/11/2012, you wrote:
My wife lost her purse in a crowded local superstore
recently. There was quite a lot of money in it, plus credit cards,
etc. When she realized she had done that, she dashed back to the
store and to the lost and found counter. She was handed her
purse. Everything was in it. Nothing had been taken.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION ; <mailto:[email protected]>de Bivort Lawrence
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 4:39 AM
Subject: [Futurework] Extraordinary honesty
Hi Lawry,
I've changed the thread for the purpose of this particular posting
because it concerns the subject of Islam you're interested in. It
was triggered off by your mention of Turkey where a remarkable
example of honesty occurred some 12/15 years ago. I was in a
foursome touring Turkey. One afternoon, the husband of the other
couple decided he wanted to look the university in Istanbul. On the
way there, while walking through a park he had a stroke (or
something to the same effect) which rendered him comatose. This
occurred early in the afternoon. He was still lying there in the
early evening, when it was finally realized that an ambulance needed
to be called for. Meantime, because he hadn't returned to the hotel,
I'd been ringing round all the hospitals in the city. By
coincidence, the hospital I happened to be ringing (the 19th) had
just received him -- so he'd obviously been lying in the park for
several hours. When I picked him up from the hospital a few days
later he suddenly realized that he didn't have his wallet (with a
great deal of Turkish money) or his (expensive) camera and
attachments. Magically, a policeman suddenly appeared with the very
same items and handed them over. I often wonder whether my friend's
ownership of his wallet and camera would have survived a similar
event in the park of an advanced country without a predominant
Islamic culture.
Keith
. At 21:52 28/11/2012, you wrote:
Greetings, everyone,
This matter of corruption -- and especially corruption of intent --
is beautifully laid out in an extraordinary Turkish movie, Takva: a
Man's Fear of God. I don't want to give the story away by
commenting on it here, but will say that it explores this matter
deeply and with great authenticity, intelligence, and integrity.
Plus, it is a riveting movie. Our local library has a copy, and so
yours may, too. Enjoy!
Lawry
On Nov 28, 2012, at 4:38 PM, Ed Weick wrote:
Perhaps the only way to be a completely incorruptible person in
today's world is to sit on a mountaintop or to isolate oneself in
a little stone cell in the depths of a monastery, but even that
may not work. There really isn't much room for purists and idealists.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK,
INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION ; <mailto:[email protected]>Ed Weick
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] There's more there than I thought
Ed,
The big difference between corruption of senior politicians and
officials in China and that in the West is that the former speak
about it openly as being a (continuing) problem while the latter
pretend that it only happens rarely. It takes slightly different
forms in the two countries. In China, bribes (usually in the form
of shares) are given to close relatives. In the West it's more of
a nod to the recipient that if he "helps" someone he'll be well
looked after once he's retired. There's nothing truer than the old
saying: "Every man has his price". Even if the price is
reputational rather than financial, it is never the case (IMO)
that an attempt at bribery is met with indifference.
In the present Tory government in the UK it would be my opinion
that most of present senior cabinet, including Cameron, plus
several Permanent Secretaries (the top officials in civil service
departments) have been bribed with the promise of good jobs later
(e.g. directorships, consultancies, top jobs with the European
Union, etc). In the previous government under Labour, it was more
of a case of the politicians 'consolidating' hundreds of key
supporters with high salaries and perks in new 'quasi
non-governmental organizations' (quangos) which carry out
newly-invented civil service type functions. In the case of the
previous prime minister, Tony Blair, he's been living off several
different streams of income ever since he retired.
Psychologists tell us that children tell fibs and devise
strategies designed to hoodwink others from only three years of
age. This suggests that deviousness is built into us genetically.
This ability to deceive is particularly necessary in any
ambitiousness male not wishing to upset males of higher social
ranking (until the right moment to strike comes along!). Sensible
governmental constitutions in the future will not appeal to
idealistic abstractions but how to make its financial operations
as open as possible.
Keith
At 15:52 28/11/2012, you wrote:
Keith Hudson and I had a brief exchange on the merits of Chrystia
Freeland's "Plutocrats". Both of us were bored after the first
forty pages or so. He suggested that I read the concluding
chapter and give up on the rest of the book. I almost did that
but then decided I'd look at the book here and there and, lo and
behold, I've found some interesting things. Thus far I've read
some of the material on "rent-seekers", plutocrats who capture an
increasing portion of existing wealth rather than producing
"value-added" wealth themselves. The American and European
financial sectors are outstanding examples. Working in an
environment of decreasing regulation, many people in the field
have become very rich via the invention and refinement of a large
variety of securities and by shifting much of the risk of doing
so onto the public sector, knowing full well that government
would see them as too big to fail and bail them out if things
went wrong. Things did indeed go wrong in 2008, and with some
exceptions like Lehman Brothers, government did bail them out,
imposing enormous costs on the public sector.
I guess those of us who've paid any attention to the economy in
the past few years already knew much of that, but Freeland
includes a lot of extra information and detail that we couldn't
have known unless we were journalists in the middle of it all, as
she was. However, there was one thing that was new to me in what
I read this morning. That was the role played by "rent-seekers"
in China's conversion from what was supposed to have been a
workers' paradise into plutocrat run state capitalism. According
to Freeland, China is as corrupt at the top as America, Europe
and oligarchic Russia. I found that rather painful because it
wasn't supposed to be like that. When I was young and highly
idealistic, I followed the Chinese Revolution very closely and
greatly admired Mao Zedong. Mao was going to show us all what
the world could really be like. Well, what seems to have
transpired in reality is another road to hell paved with good intentions.
I'll quit here, but may post more as I read more bits and pieces
of Freeland's book.
Ed
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