[quote=patientrenter]CA renter, TG put it very well in another post. People who “do the right thing” are the ones you’d be happy to share a beer with, and that’s about all we can decide to do.
Until now, I have felt quite content to live out my upbringing, which emphasized morals/ethics over minimal legality. I felt that I might lose out a lot in the short run, but only a little in the long run, and the satisfaction of doing the “right thing” made that long term loss OK. But when a very large % of all that I contribute to society (as represented by my earnings and savings) gets transferred to people who acted totally irresponsibly and to my direct detriment, and who lived it up big while I was carefully denying myself lots of goodies, it forces me to re-think.
Can I overcome that moral imperative I was raised with? If I do, the lesson I take from what’s happened is that I can have a great deal more materially. It’s a lousy incentive scheme. I do realize that, as people like me start to make the decision to turn to the dark side, our leaders will be yukking it up about ethics and morals and all that. But when it counted, when decisions had to be made about whether vast amounts of money would be transferred to people who acted irresponsibly, those same politicians said Yes, and screw the Moral Hazard issue. I won’t forget.[/quote]
PR: My grandma came here from Germany in 1935 with my dad and uncle. She left because she hated what she was seeing there, especially the book burnings (she was a teacher) and loathed the people there that were telling her to be a “good German” (don’t question, just follow orders and the crowd).
She was a firm believer in Edmund Burke’s dictum, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
While this situation isn’t quite that dire, it does illustrate the frustration and loneliness of being someone who believes in having a moral compass and moral center and sticking to your principles regardless of what the crowd is doing. There are a lot of times I feel like a schmoe for having done the right thing, when the idiots and criminals who gamed the system are walking away unscathed, but then I realize it doesn’t matter what they’re doing, only what I’m doing and that I have to look in the mirror every day.
Plus, I’d rather have beers with you and TG and CA_renter than those clowns any day. You’re a lot more interesting to talk to.
