It’s amazing. Once you are sensitized to a situation, everywhere you look, you keep finding evidence of it. Of course, you have to be wary of falling prey to confirmation bias, but in this case, I’m happy to admit to presenting one side of the argument and let others bring up their own evidence to the contrary.
What has happened recently — as those who read these posts regularly may have noticed — is that I have started out looking for the causes of the problems of our world, and I keep coming up with the same conclusion. We live in a world where the winners write the rules, and even in our so-called democracy, they continue to skew the system to their own advantage.
Sometimes, as I showed in “Anti-Monopoly Rules Don’t Apply to Winners” they set up what seem to be fair rules, with special dispensations for themselves/.
Sometimes it’s our whole country that is taking advantage of the Third World.
And sometimes it’s our whole economy, with a stock market designed for the main purpose of allowing winners to fleece losers.
This week, I’m just going to continue the list, and keep my comments short:
Number 4: Conflict of Interest.
Several times lately, federal government ministers have been caught using the power of their position for their own benefit or that of their friends. Commentators on CBC’s At Issue brought up the point that as recently as the Brian Mulroney years, cabinet ministers lost their positions for these transgressions. Now, there seems to be a “the rules don’t apply to me” feeling entitlement. “Oh, I didn’t know,” doesn’t cut it. But when the Prime Minister himself is one of the main offenders, what can you expect?
Number 5: 170,000 Abandoned Oil Wells.
If anybody had any idea that the Alberta Government had the public interest in mind over the oil companies, this statistic blows that thought out of the water. Oil companies drill the well, often on somebody’s private land, and take the profits. When the well runs dry, they just walk away, leaving garbage and infrastructure rusting in place, with no follow-up from the government. Question: do you pay half a million bucks to clean up your mess, or do you continue to pay the farmer $3,000 a year “rent” on his land? Or you can simply go broke and forget the whole thing.
This kind of skewed economics exists all over. Many companies find it cheaper to pay the lawsuits from injured workers rather than revamp their systems to be safer.
Number 6: Payday Loan Companies
One reason a lot of people are poor is that they don’t understand mathematics. And these are the people who go to loan companies that charge outrageous percentages of interest, then boost their take with fees and extra charges until the situation is way beyond usurious. A commentator on CTV the other night suggested the real solution would be to make sure the borrowers had a living wage, so they didn’t need the service. Failing that, perhaps the major banks, which continue to make record profits, might be influenced to provide payday loans to the needy at the same rates of interest other people pay.
The Bottom Line
Unfortunately, one main advantage that allows a person to be successful in business is a lack of empathy. A second is a lack of imagination. These are the kind of people that crowd to the highest part of the ship as it sinks but don’t do anything to plug the holes, because as long as they aren’t drowning, everything is fine.
They don’t realize we’re all in this together, and their selfishness is making life worse for everyone. In the long run, that includes themselves.
But they couldn’t imagine that happening.