No fucking shit.

[gridlore]

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.

- Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

No, really? Amazing. See, I figured that one out in the wake of the Savings and Loan debacle. I saw it again when I read about the robber barons and the birth of the labor movement. Anytime there is a chance to gain wealth, power, and/or prestige, unethical people will flock to it. People who will flout the laws, break the rules, and trample everyone to get their particular brass ring. They may even be a distinct minority, but when there are tens of thousands of bankers, even a 1% rate of occurrence for these thugs means hundreds or thousands of them.

Lord & Sons would be much better off if I had a pintel-mounted M2HB Machine Gun. I see a truck from White Cap or another of our rivals? BUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDA. But we have laws that keep us from doing that. So we are forced to beat them into the ground with better service and competitive prices. Darn it.

Folks, I am a high-school dropout. Why the FUCK do I grasp the concept of "people are greedy fucks, and given the chance, will screw their own grandmothers to make a buck" better than a man with a couple of advanced degrees?

Comments

You don't.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

These folks understand quite well how things work. All the bafflegab about self-regulating markets is just that, bafflegab. Or propaganda, if you prefer a blunter way of putting it. It serves as a convenient cover for looting the country.

May I recommend the book Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein? A pretty decent deconstruction of the Chicago School, with copious footnotes and references.

If you want to look further back, to the last time we had this Freidmanite system, I suggest Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davies.