The Worst Thing

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it much here on my blog, but I've been quite vocal about all the crap that's been going down on Wall Street in the last couple years (much longer than that, in fact, but it has really only recently become a major issue among the members of the American public). At this point, I think your average person on the street is pretty deeply distrustful of AIG and Goldman Sachs and all the rest, which means that the guy who harbors a lot more anger in general (namely, me) is absolutely frothing mad that this level of corruption and exploitation of the little guy has been allowed to happen. If there's one thing I'm a big fan of, it's social justice, and there has been none of it in this area.

Our government has, as it typically does when some wrong has been done on a huge scale, waited until every last horse has escaped to close the barn door. Still, though, at least if they start regulating the activities on Wall Street, it'll prevent this sort of thing from happening again, right? Well, that's the reasoning as I understand it, and I had been of the impression myself that increased regulation was the way to go, though I generally have strong reservations about giving the government any more power, since it mostly either gets abused, or else results in even more bureaucratic red tape, if not both. With these caveats in mind, I found myself wondering if perhaps more regulation of Wall Street is not, in fact, what the problem calls for.

I recall hearing once that the worst thing about Christianity is the Christians. The same thing, I think, could be said for capitalism and capitalists. I would argue that a capitalist system will necessarily contain some degree of evil. It's not that evil is inherent in the system; rather, evil is inherent in human nature. Okay, maybe evil is too strong a word here, but the bottom line is that there will always be those who look to take such a system too far. In a capitalist system, each individual is supposed to look out for his/herself first and foremost, in a fiscal sense. No question, it's good to take care of yourself, but once you are adequately taken care of, is it so wrong to take care of some others? Capitalism says yes, it is wrong to take care of others! Really, now? How many millions or billions of dollars do people need? Doesn't matter, there will always be greedy people, for whom another million dollars is of vital importance, even if they have nine hundred million other dollars, and even if they couldn't reasonably expect to spend it in their lifetime or, indeed, in several dozen lifetimes. My main problem with capitalism is that it encourages people like this. The curious thing is that socialism (for which I advocate, at least in theory) would suffer from the same problem in practice, not due to any lack of soundness in its rationale, but from that human nature thing that some of us have that makes us unsatisfied with "good enough", that makes us reach for more money, more power, more anything we can get our hands on. In fact, any system would suffer from this problem. There's always gonna be one guy (or more) looking to exploit any system that is put in place.

I wish I had a solution to propose, but I think the sad truth is that no amount of pills could cure the ills of society. Even if ninety-nine out of one hundred people were essentially good (they're not), that one other guy would still fuck it all up for everyone. The good news in all this is that you'll get to keep reading my angry blogs, because I can sleep soundly knowing that there is no chance at all that we could ever hope to get every last person on this rock to be on the same page. Hell, Audrey and I can't even agree on what condiment is best used on a hot dog. And you want to get six billion-plus people to come to a consensus about what will fix all the crap that keeps going wrong with our alleged society? Good luck with that.