Hey Mary, Excellent point about trust. But, didn't you omit the part about trusting government? I mean just look at what happened to people who put their trust in the value of the dollar which is solely controlled by government policies. It's no secret that its value has been on a downhill slide since we went off the gold standard. Of course, that's just for starters. How about trust in our politicians' promises? Shall I go on? No. I'm sure you get my drift.
Regards, Platt On 15 Feb 2010 at 7:42, Mary wrote: > Hello John, Dave T. and all in this thread, > > [John said] > > I think a key element of this protestant ethic was an internalized > > moral > > code that made bankruptcy unthinkable and honesty and trust in > > contractual > > dealings and fairness. Those things made capitalism successful more > > than > > any inherent "god rewards faithfulness with wealth" type of ideological > > shift. > > I agree! My son and I were having this conversation just today. He said > the world runs on money, and I said no, the world runs on trust. The > money's no good if we can't trust that it's worth what we think it is. It > would be hard to do most transactions if you could not trust the other side > to do what they say they will do. We would be reduced to those movie scenes > where the buyer and the drug dealer each slide their packages simultaneously > across the ground at gunpoint. > > After watching recent economic events, it seems pretty clear to me that was > the first domino. The big banks violated the public trust. Ordinary people > did not break the trust, bankers and traders did. Now I think we are seeing > the inevitable backlash. Mortgagees are asking themselves why they should > continue to honor a contract that was essentially an inflated mortgage based > on an inflated house price. If the banks are too big to fail, that seems to > have turned out to mean that individuals are too small to succeed. > > In my mind, this is just one in a whole set of things that are happening > because corporate regulation has been relaxed to the point where they are > allowed the freedom to operate in any way they see fit to increase their > stock price. > > I do not think the government is the enemy, but corporate greed is, and the > government is the only tool we have to limit it. > > Is it lost on anyone that health insurance providers in the US just reported > record-breaking annual profits? We can't reasonably expect them to regulate > themselves, but we can reasonably expect government to do so on our behalf. > > Mary > > - The most important thing you will ever make is a realization. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
