Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 May 2006 17:22:56
I have been having another hard and difficukt day. Its been so hard that I'm on page 232 of Adventures in the Screentrade by William Goldman. Why is that in same way significant? Well..... I only started it at 7 this morning. There was no work to do. I was told not to go to the airport until tomorrow morning so had an almost complete day to myself. I have had to do 4 e-mails and 5 calls all day.
Great story on the BBC though. "Can you do good while making profits?" It looks at the Crypto-Capitalists, such as Bill Gates, and how they use their money to help others less well off - not all of us of course. It appears that certain people - Gates, George Soros, Google Guys - see themselves as "liberal communists".
Now, please forgive me, but how can such capitalist icons claim to be even small 'c' communists? Does no one realise what the term means? Do they mean that they can exploit the workers and then because they give some money back that makes it ok?
To me what they are doing is what people should do anyway - help those less well off than themselves, financially, spiritually or physically. This is the one duty that every member of the human race, regardless of race, creed, religion or political persausion, should do. That they make it sound like something special annoys me.
Hasn't Gates exploited the markets and achieved a dominant monopoly using means that are bordering on the illegal? Hasn't Soros made money buy destabilising the currency and stock markets in a way that promotes personal financial gain over the best for the rest of society. Remember, everytime the stock markets are manipulated in this way affects all our pensions and investments. He is hitting everyone else, but particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, in a harmful way.
Yes, I am a capitalist. Yes, I am a conservative. However wrong is wrong. In my mind the ends do not, and never have or will, justify the means where money is involved. The only reason they can give money away is that they have way more than even some small countries would need. They'll never spend it, they want to minimise taxes and get good publicity.
Maybe I'm being unreasonable in my outlook? I think not.
Give money away certainly. Help those poorer than you definitely. Heal the sick. Feed the hungry. Do all these things. Yet don't do it at the expense of other people to start off with. Find fairer ways to make profits. Enable everyone to have a chance in life. Don't run competitors into the ground so you can sell more, or earn a few more million.
At the end of the day, if you make money by exploiting others, then you'll never gain peace or satisfaction when you try to use it to do good. You can never remove the stains of blood you've already put there.