

Monetary profit should be our new moral code - gscott
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/16/brook.moral.code.outdated/

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mattmaroon
Damn, I submitted this, only to find it was already here but with the title
editorialized to drastically oversimplify what is a well-reasoned and
important argument. Now I have to flag it. That makes me a sad panda.

~~~
jkempf
I don't see how it's either reasoned or important. All I see is rubbish.

Giving Objectivists the benefit of the strongest argument, what the author is
saying is that Men Of Industry move humanity forward by virtue of their
rapacity. Greed as a motivator causes them to bring together knowledge and
production. By combining knowledge and production, humanity can in some wise
advance to a "better" existence, and so this greed, while unseemly to
parochial minds, is really a good thing.

At what expense, though?

Industrial greed was responsible for the Cuyahoga River repeatedly catching
fire (!). It was responsible for GE dumping PCBs into the Hudson River, for
Union Carbide in Bhopal, for the fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico, for Mercury
poisoning of hatters, for locking seamstresses in the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory while it burned, for Phossy jaw, for countless industrial deaths and
disfigurements forcing the creation of OSHA, for the CIA overthrow of the
democratically-elected government of Guatemala in 1952 at the behest of United
Fruit, the dot-com and housing bubbles, and a litany of other industrial
fiascos and most of the wars of the 20th Century.

This is what greed gets you. This is all in the pursuit of the production of
stuff.

What it doesn't get you is the discovery or invention of stuff. Yes,
industrialists have in the past provided large sums of money to fund R&D --
which goes to support people whose motivation is discovery and reputation, not
money. Presumably most of us here have either been to or are currently
enrolled at a legitimate college or university. How many professors or PhD
students are motivated mostly or entirely by money? By the rapacious need to
have more cash than someone else in the department?

Galileo and Darwin were in it for truth (and possibly fame).

So was Tesla.

Edison? He screwed Tesla out of promised money for improving Edison's (crappy)
products.

The people who get the money aren't the people who discover the knowledge, or
invent the device. So we shouldn't pretend like they are.

------
jkempf
I for one welcome our new anarcho-capitalist overlords. I'd like to remind
them that as a anonymous internet personality, I can be helpful in rounding up
others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Really, I'm not sure what to say to this, other than wonder why CNN is giving
space to objectivists.

