[hnmcs]

Once I met a guy who worked for some Edward Jones-type company, investing the money of moms and pops, making money from watching various markets for opportunities to make profits.

He was so in love with how effectively the whole world made sense in terms of dollars, contracts, and trades. He liked the meta-economics of the prevailing world economic order. He would think in terms of "is it worth it to me to buy your debt?" if ever you said anything within a mile's distance of implying that you might want money for some economic purpose.

Well, at that time, there was no weed boom. It was illegal for the most part, in the U.S.

And his worldview, which always tried to relate everything -- from national or world news, right on down to the conversations of everyone around him after the workday was done -- everything he related to in terms of how our existing systems of money, contract obligations, and legal decisions was so logical and coherent and wonderful.

What did he think about weed then? That it was an unproductive (one of his favorite words) and likely immoral industry of drugs, not fit to be placed in his glorious world of markets and trade deals.

What does he think about it now? You know already. What do all these full-time market-men think about it: markets are awesome and efficient and now it's just another market service for them to try to arbitrage and to buy ownership of so that they themselves can maximize profit on the margins.

What was the difference before and after? Well, in this one respect, there is no difference: he still goes on effusing self-serving pro-US-capitalist rhetoric everywhere he goes. The one difference is that now he doesn't think weed is bad, it's just another thing for him to try to leverage financial/economic advantage out of, behind his Edward Jones-style desk, while there is a whole 'nother entire class of people mentioned in this article who probably don't dig his own worldview as much as he does.

[lmm]

> What did he think about weed then? That it was an unproductive (one of his favorite words) and likely immoral industry of drugs, not fit to be placed in his glorious world of markets and trade deals.

> What does he think about it now? You know already. What do all these full-time market-men think about it: markets are awesome and efficient and now it's just another market service for them to try to arbitrage and to buy ownership of so that they themselves can maximize profit on the margins.

Isn't that exactly how we want our businesses to behave? If a businessman who didn't want to get involved in something when it was illegal now wants to get involved now that it's legal, isn't that good business ethics?

[hnmcs]

If my rhetoric is too grandiose, or my illogic too hazy, then I have to concede that you can parse details out of it which seem to be incorrect.

So, sure, that's exactly how we want our businesses to be, you are right, I concede for the sake of a limited argument under all the rest of the assumptions you have when you make that statement. I have unstated assumptions as well, everywhere.

Overall I was trying to make a hard point. I think that people are a just a little too content with the status quo. I believe only radical changes can fix the brokenness of our systems, and only on a long time line. (Our systems are broken at so many, many different levels, we could start by talking about problematic broken hardware/software systems if we wanted, and probably arrive at the conclusion that the present paradigm needs a radical change in the long run, saying nothing of money, law, or politics.)

I wanted to complain about how we expect our businesses to behave, because I think it's dysfunctional. But in the pragmatic sense, I'm not making any useful complaint. You are being more pragmatic.

The first thing I've come to realize the importance of by now, is that talk is just talk, and radical changes aren't going to happen on any time line, not without a lot of consensus.

I sincerely hope that some aspect of the human nature itself does not prevent us from coming to healthier consensuses than what we currently have. All I see is a system that maximizes paper profits while not counting environment damage or exhaustible resource availablity. Accounting is everything, and I fear for all humanity if we don't come to some better system of accounting value.

[burkaman]

Yes, it's good business ethics, but it's not good human ethics to completely base your moral judgments of something on whether or not it's legal and profitable.

[feintruled]

This reminds me of Iain Bank's books "The Business" where the corporation in question was sitting on the perfect cocaine snorting delivery device ('the Incan'), speculatively developed and just waiting for the day the drug might become legal.

[hnmcs]

A tail wagging the dog is the notion I wish to deplore the most.

Way too many people think that pure logic (and wisdom of experience) is what leads to their value-judgements and opinions. Like my example mom-and-pop broker above (who is no fat cat in the scheme of things, just someone too invested in the neoliberal capitalist paradigm to think straight anymore), they will switch their value judgements when their one true god (money, joint-stock ownership, and the corporate form of governance) tells them to switch. When weed is blacklisted, they can invent reasons to hate weed. When weed is legal, it's just another glorious benefit of our market system to provide this good/service to all the people who demand it. (And for them to rightfully earn a profit somewhere in the trade, or in the ownership of the business providing the service.) They make up reasons to believe what the markets tell them to believe. A dog wagged by a tail, if you will.

Likewise, when you have central banks and too-big-to-fails in this environment buying up everything in the stock markets with an exponentially growing supply of USD, JPYs, and euros, you wind up in a situation where the market tail is actually trying to wag the economic dog.

We forgot that it was supposed to be the other way around, because of how far we've gone off the rails into our deficit-spending-until-death mode of existence, since year 19XX, for some value of XX, I favor about the time Reagan took over, but you can go back further if you like.

Thanks for sharing your reference, by the way.

[hnmcs]

So I was complaining about the tail wagging the dog.

It happens in terms of literal power and ownership, when money is produced and awarded in toxic ways, yet it is all that matters for obtaining power and ownership.

And it happens in terms of the mind: of people working in aid of a status quo which is being driven the wrong way.

Well guess what, you're not going to let some insane human elitists (how close is that guy Donald Trump to them? anything is too close for my comfort) try to drive me through the tail of the dog that is my life. If you have an insane and toxic system, then it's better to start getting radical.

Ah, but now -- how to get radical? There we all explode.

update, with recommended reading:

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, Milton Mayer

We either do or don't have people successfully playing at money/power/mind-game for the stakes of controlling the planet from the top down. Either way, I am afraid. Because a bunch of moronic dictators fighting each other unsuccessfully is no better than a single one successfully winning such a game.

[hnmcs]

> "mom and pop broker"

/s/broker/asset manager/

[hnmcs]

/s/asset manager/currency trader/