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Good piece Everald. The writer of the book 'The Road Less Travelled", Scott Peck, likened our emotions to wild horses which once directed and integrated are the source of mental and spiritual energy. Reading your article made me think that money and the obsession with it are similar. Used properly it is the oil that lubricates our society, used badly it causes great damage. What becomes of these cowboy directors? Do they pop up somewhere else and rampage on? SteveofRobbo.

Although I don't disagree with anything Compton wrote, I wondered why he bothered to write it, or what his point was.. the sort of behaviour of which he complains has always been part of human nature.

Executives make enormous mistakes by, for example, paying too much for acquisitions, and then use their position to make others pay for those blunders. Again, this is part of human nature .. and there is little anyone can "do" about it directly..

Is there rally nothing we can do? Perhaps treat the assets of those executives (and anyone who has benefited from it if personal assets are disposed of) as a little less sacrosant.

Governments are more than happy to hammer the income of wage earners when it suits. While that approach continues perhaps the assets of the wealthy should be a lot less protected.

If a company is to big to fail and has to be bailed out by the taxpayer then the company should become the property of the taxpayers, losses should start with those making the management decisions not taxpayers or employees.

If the spouses, children, mates of the bosses have assets which appear to have been accrued mostly as a result of a relationship with those bosses rather than through their own efforts then don't protect those assets while leaving others to incur a loss of legitimately earned assets.

R0bert

"Our masters rely on our labor to make them wealthy, on our children for cannon fodder in war and on our collective chants for adulation. They would otherwise happily slip us rat poison. When they retreat into their inner sanctums, which they keep hidden from public view, they speak in the cold words of manipulation, power and privilege, words that expose their visions of themselves as entitled and beyond the reach of morality or law."

This came from an article written by Chris Hedges, one entitled "The S&M Election."

It seemed pertinent to this thread! You can catch it on Information Clearing House.info

R0bert
the solutions you are proposing are worse than the disease, and impossible to put into practice.. as for companies being too big to fail, you're thinking of banks .. and even then they are permitted to fail to the extent of being merged with other banks, as has happened in Australia previously (in the 1990s). The Brit govenment use to regularly nationaise companies that were failing but have long given up on that practice.

David G
Your quote actually describes old-style communist regimes (irespective of what the author intended).. now its difficult to find any government that bad outside of Africa or some parts of South America.. The bit about cannon fodder, in particular, is widely inaccurate given the broad retreat in conscription since the end of the cold war..

Curmudgeon, have you noticed the coffins arriving in Australia from Afghanistan. They hold Australians!

Did you read the whole article by Chris Hedges, a writer with a lot of prestige internationally?

A quick lip is easily beaten by considered reflection!

A bureaucrat is a bureaucrat, whether they are in a Company or a Government. They are are all a pack of .... (aussie comment) and are in it for themselves. The advantage of with private ones is they don't have the monopoly power of the State behind them. This argument is .... (more vernacular). The main differences between the two pernicious types are that the Government one likes to mask themselves "virtue" and does much more damage.

David G

While obviously any deaths add up to too many, go and have a look at the actual count of deaths in Iraq (are we up past two week's worth of road toll over several years?) and then recollect that those in the coffins are volunteer professionals. So they are not being "slaughtered" and they are not conscripts which is what your quote implies.

As I said the quote fits early 20th century regimes and later communist ones. If you want to be taken seriously don't over-state..

Given a choice between accepting your thoughts and those of Chris Hedges, Curmudgeon, give me the latter any time.

'Christopher Lynn Hedges is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and war correspondent specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies.'

Perhaps you'd like to include a brief biography of your own achievements, Curmud.