On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:26 PM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > Long but interesting (to me) article. I post some selected quotes > > Time to Test Corporate Leaders to Weed out Psychopaths > > http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_64073.shtml
Nothing new here that humanity hasn't encountered since the dawn of time. Most leaders are pre-moral, this is well known, and hence the various checks that have always been in place in reasonable societies on the power of these leaders. Ancient Greece and Rome did not allow the Emperor to pass amendments to the law without the counsel of the city elders. Ancient India did not allow Kings to create policy, they only had the authority to wage war for defense and territorial acquisition, the same as the Romans and Greeks. Immanuel Kant argues for morality, but Nietzsche's übermensch is an unfeeling pre-moral man who is said to be able to dominate the older races with their silly consciences and Christian moralities. The Bhagavad Gita argues for morality within the bounds of duty, and yet Chanakya argues for pre-morality. It's always been this way. There's a constant war between self interest and community interest, where self interest seems to win for most of the time, but never completely. The gay nineties (1890s that is) was a time similar to now when a few powerful and rich men (the 1%) controlled the entirety of wealth. Doubtless they acted in sheer self interest and to the detriment of others. This led to the labor education though rogue printing presses, working class unrest and eventual unionization of the 1920s/1930s. Though heavily protested, it led to a decline of the absurdly rich, new taxes, the formation of a new middle class, and unsurprisingly after just a few years a new crop of super rich from war profits. Through the cold war years the rich were more or less kept out of government, but they were clawing their way back in, and in the Reagen years democracy and capitalism were once again subverted when the government rather unashamedly allowed the willful destruction of Unions and subversion of worker health and safety regulations. Subsequent governments defunded public welfare schemes, while levying new taxes on the poor through indirect means. Read Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman for summaries of all of this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1922 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_labor_issues_and_events (Notice the lack of significant labor protests since 1990s except the WTO protests of 99 - which was only accidentally a labor protest, mostly green peace) Today we have the Occupy Wall Street protests, the funding and backing of 1% candidates like Gingrich and the same being acted out in India. The Naxalite movement being crushed mindless of the human cost only because Eastern India needs to be opened for business. The West kept silent as the LTTE were crushed at a staggering human cost because it opens up Sri Lanka for business. Wars in Libya and Iraq are acceptable for the same reason. C'est la vie / O tempora o mores / This too shall pass - pick your favorite balm.
