Matt Gingell <mjg223@is7.nyu.edu> Wrote:
>What I don't understand is why you're so much more afraid of big
>government than big capital.
Because big government has created a sea of blood and butchered
hundreds of millions of people, often their own citizens. Granted, few
companies actively opposed these monstrous regimes, but that's not
quite the same thing as instigating it, and anyway can you really blame
them for not playing the hero, it would be economic if not actual suicide
to do so. Yes Microsoft can be arrogant and yes, it makes me mad
when Windows crashes too, but at least Bill Gates doesn't shove his
customers into ovens.
I just finished the new biography of John D Rockefeller by Ron Chernon
called "Titan", it was a good book but was supposed to document all the
dreadful things he did to become the riches man in the world. Well, if this
is as bad as capitalism gets I can only conclude capitalism is not very bad.
He was very intelligent, very aggressive, and had the ability to find any
economic weakness in a competitor and exploit it, but nothing wrong with
that. It's true he sometimes bribed legislatures, but although clearly illegal
I didn't find that immoral. At the time there were foolish (and probably
unconstitutional) laws forbidding corporations from being involved in
intra state commerce, if the law was obeyed the industrial revelation would
not have happened in America, so he did the only thing he could, he opened his
wallet. I could not find any instances where Rockefeller's business decisions
were clearly immoral and only a few that were even entered a gray area.
It's funny, the book I read before this was a biography of Stalin, before
that of Lenin and before that one on Hitler, so when Chernon talked about
some "evil" thing that Rockefeller did I almost had to laugh. Compared to
these government leaders Rockefeller on his worst day was no more
than naughty.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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