OESTERHOUDT STRIKES
Last week, I took a walk in Brooklyn. As I made my way up Tillary Street past Flatbush Avenue, I noticed an incredible commercial message from Charles Schwab adorning a bus stop: "We want to make a difference, not just a buck. Let's make a difference together."
I beg your pardon? Do investment houses really care about making anything more than a buck? Why do people invest money in the first place? To turn one buck into two or more bucks. It's all about making bucks. If investing makes any "difference," it's a differential between the amount invested and the amount returned. And everyone wants that differential to be positive.
But let's leave investors aside for a moment. Let's focus on the institutional guys. You know, the investment bankers who craft bewildering "portfolios" designed to churn fees and hopefully yield a nifty profit for the client. Now, an investment banker exists to do two things: (1) To maximize the monetary return on a client's investment; and (2) To maximize his own fees by selecting appropriate transactions. To be blunt, it is all about money. In fact, investment bankers are more than mere employees; they are fiduciaries. They must subordinate their own interests to their clients' interests. They can even be sued for failing to make enough money, because that shows "they did not sufficiently have their clients interests at heart."
In that light, it is preposterous for Charles Schwab to suggest that investment bankers care about anything more than "making a buck." If they cared about anything else--like "making a difference"--they would lose their jobs, clients and everything else they value.
And what does "making a difference" really mean? Have investment houses suddenly lost their collective minds? Do they want to open soup kitchens or something? Do they want to build houses for the homeless? How about pay for health care for indigents? Is that the kind of "social difference" they want to make? The phrase "making a difference" implies broader service to the public, or even ethical purity. It rings with selfless nobility. Yet such things are completely antithetical to an investment house's primary mission: To make profits for themselves and their private clients. There is nothing "public" or "noble" about that enterprise.
Recent stock market scandals only weaken Charles Schwab's pitiful attempt to appear altruistic. Did Lehman Bros. care about "making a difference" when they lured investors into placing money on a housing market they bet would fail? The bottom line is that people expect investment bankers to engage in dirty dealing. It is par for the course. Worse, most investors would prefer their bankers to engage in the most barely legal conduct possible so long as that conduct yields a maximal return. That is what it means to "make a buck," not "a difference."
Commerce is about making bucks, not a difference. That is just the way it works. And it is the height of disingenuousness for anyone to suggest otherwise, let alone massive investment banks that personify the commercial spirit. If investment banks choose to "make a difference," chances are they do so in order to gain tax advantages, not to soothe their conscience.
Put thematically, the clash between "making a buck" and "making a difference" is a clash between commerce and ethics. It is also a clash between ends and means. Commerce is about ends; ethics is about means. A commercial man only cares about the bottom line, no matter how he gets there (provided he does not risk criminal sanction). An ethical man cares about the way he achieves his goal. When a person commits to making bucks, he has a distinctly result-oriented motive. But when a person wishes to make a difference in the ethical sense, he is as much concerned about the way he brings about positive change as he is concerned about the change itself.
In commerce, means are secondary. Investment houses like Charles Schwab know that. If it suddenly adopted "making a difference" as its primary business model, its clients would leave in droves. And the company's shareholders would angrily vote off the "insane" directors who approved such an idiotic way to do business. In their place, the shareholders would quickly appoint directors with a more sensible business model, namely: "Making a buck."
And the new directors would immediately yank those ridiculous posters from the bus stops.
Hey, at least they would be honest.
Showing posts with label Deception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deception. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
"HONOR BOUND TO DEFEND FREEDOM" : WHAT ARE WE STILL DOING IN IRAQ?
AN ESSAY
Two weeks ago, I watched Paul Greengrass' searing Green Zone. Although the movie masquerades as a pure action thriller, it actually deeply criticizes American involvement in Iraq, especially the manufactured casus belli that led us to war. At several points during the movie,my emotions surged. I have always spoken out against the War in Iraq. I always considered it an illegitimate, illegal, unethical, imperialist venture without justification in law, justice or good policy. The movie showed raw American power at work. And that reawakened my slumbering vitriol about the war.
Green Zone opens in the din of an air raid. It is March 19, 2003, the day the U.S. air force began bombing Baghdad. Sirens wail. We hear the buildings shudder as explosions rip through the city. Iraqi men and women frantically run through hallways, shouting and screaming. We see lights flickering. Dust falls from ceilings. Windows break. Then the shot pans out to a vista over the city. Massive fireballs light up the night. Buildings burn. Anti-aircraft fire streaks into the sky. Jet engines and cruise missiles boom through the air before yet another explosion rips the skyline.
That scene choked me up. So that's American power, isn't it: The power to bomb a city into oblivion. The power to make civilians scramble in panic as the house next door explodes into a million pieces. The power to knock out electricity and destroy infrastructure. And for what? In hindsight, I knew there was no justification for the war. There were never any weapons of mass destruction. Iraq did not plan 9/11, nor did any Iraqis hijack the planes that attacked the United States. No, America flexed its muscles against Iraq simply because it could. It ignored the United Nations and its weapons inspectors. It acted with breathtaking defiance, even if it mumbled about "reliable independent intelligence" concerning an Iraqi nuclear arms program.
Worse, we're still there, seven years and 6000 American dead later. That's to say nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and countless more lives ruined for nothing.
War apologists will inevitably label be a socialist for making these observations. They will tell me that "intelligence was uncertain" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in early 2003, so it was better to be "safe than sorry." They will also tell me that America had "good reason" to attack Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant who tortured and murdered his own people. In fact, they will stress the fact that America "fights for freedom" around the world; even if we did not find nuclear weapons in Iraq, at least we gave Iraqis democracy.
I recoil from this facetious "freedom" explanation for the invasion. The argument is not just illogical; it also shows American involvement in Iraq for what it really is: A selective, hypocritical, arbitrary application of brute force. It is illogical because America does not really care about "worldwide freedom." In the first place, it is presumptuous to even suggest that "American-style freedom" can work in diverse cultures around the world. And even if such a thing as "freedom" were universal, why stop with Iraq? George W. Bush said that the war was necessary because "Iraqis needed freedom from a murderous tyrant who tortured and gassed his own people." Yet there are many nations across the globe that need the same treatment. The "freedom" rationale--if believed--would require U.S. military involvement in virtually every sub-Saharan African nation, as well as Saudi Arabia, several southeast Asian countries and even Russia. There are "tyrants" in all those nations who "murder their own people."
So why haven't we attacked all these other countries? If we truly care about "freedom," we should attack Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo, Pakistan and Malaysia. The fact that we haven't shows that our involvement in Iraq is purely selective. And because the freedom rationale is so weak, it begs the real question: Why Iraq? Only a naïve idiot could believe that America had a genuine interest in "Iraqis' freedom from tyranny." So what was the real reason?
For a long time, I thought that America invaded Iraq to gain access to its lucrative oil reserves. The cynic in me can never really suppress the thought. Yet after seven years of occupation, oil prices are no lower than they were in 2002. In fact, they have even spiked several times in the ensuing years. With oil men like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush in the White House, Iraq's oil must have been one reason why they decided to invade. In retrospect, it should have been an easy assignment: Knock out Saddam, capture the oil fields, set up some pipelines and start pumping.
But it did not work out that way. The war planners encountered a set of problems they did not anticipate: Sectarian strife. They must have underestimated how difficult it would be to occupy Iraq. They could not set up their pipelines or build their oil-carrying infrastructure because the Iraqis did not just roll over and allow the Americans to have their way with their country. They sabotaged roads, blew up tankers, ambushed convoys and beheaded "contractors." And because men like Donald Rumsfeld woefully miscalculated how much force would be needed to subdue Iraq, the U.S. military never had sufficient strength to pacify the countryside. Rumsfeld thought a "small, rapidly mobile force" with overwhelming air power could claim Iraq.
He was wrong. In the end, U.S. forces in Iraq wound up fighting a desperate "fire brigade" war in which they struggled to respond to local hotspots without bringing overall stability to the country. As a consequence, America could not realize its initial commercial war goal: Oil mercantilism.
Still, I am not writing today to summarize America's strategic failure in Iraq. Rather, I am writing to stress that America's failure was far larger than mere military stalemate. America sacrificed much more than young soldiers' blood to occupy Iraq. It also sacrificed its historically "moral high ground" in war by engaging in illegal, unethical behavior on an unprecedented scale. In the end, American occupiers showed themselves little better than the Baathist torturers they set out to depose in 2003.
Green Zone alludes to this. In brief, the movie follows an army officer (Matt Damon) assigned to locate nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" at various sites throughout Baghdad. After coming up empty every time, he begins to wonder whether his intelligence is sound. He decides to investigate his sources and gradually uncovers a tangled web of official deceit running all the way down from the Pentagon. When he realizes that the Pentagon has basically misled the army into supporting the war, he sets out to locate an Iraqi general who met with a senior Pentagon official (Greg Kinnear) prior to the war. The general told the Pentagon official that Iraq had no WMD program. The Pentagon official lied about what the general said and told Washington that Iraq did have such a program. To prevent the truth from emerging, the Pentagon official sends a hit squad to kill the general. Meanwhile, the army officer rushes to save him and expose the truth.
Green Zone's plotline makes for a good thriller. But it also makes a valuable point: America's case for war against Iraq was marred from the outset. It was built upon official deception. It threw ethics to the wind and committed American blood for fabricated reasons. The movie shows the American government working in a criminally underhanded manner. It shows senior American officials manipulating the truth and authorizing murder to conceal it. While Green Zone might just be a movie, it is certainly based on real events.
I thought America was supposed to be better than this. What ever happened to America as the "White Knight" of international politics? There was a time when America went to war for good things--and only as a last resort. There was a time when people around the world looked to America as a beacon of freedom and justice. During that time, no one would have dared think America could be tyrannical or evil. America did not lie, cheat, deceive, torture, murder or kill. It punished those who did while remaining true to its ethical principles. Hitler tortured, killed and invaded. America liberated the death camps and freed Europe from Nazi domination. That was noble and just. That was America's international reputation. That America could never act a villain.
Sadly, America did act a villain in Iraq. In a telling scene, Green Zone reminds us that American forces committed atrocities against Iraqi prisoners. It shows us a "detainee camp" in which U.S. forces hold allegedly "high-value" Iraqis in a stockade. It shows U.S. troops brutalizing prisoners with clubs, barking dogs and extremely loud music. It shows them forcing prisoners to sit in uncomfortable positions. We hear prisoners crying out in pain from darkened solitary cells. Some even lie bleeding on the floor without medical care.
Ironically, a sign over the stockade reads: "Camp So-and-So : Honor-Bound to Defend Freedom."
What kind of freedom is this? What kind of honor? It is as if the American army in Iraq still believed that it was the "White Knight" of 1945, even though its "intelligence division" members acted more like SS torturers than noble liberators.
There is no honor in torture or inhumane treatment. America said it waged war in Iraq to overthrow tyranny and torture. Yet within weeks, it began committing the same outrages on Iraqi prisoners that Saddam committed against his own people. Of course, war apologists will say that troops in the field must discover valuable battlefield intelligence "by any means necessary." That may be so as a practical matter. But America used to draw ethical strength from its refusal to engage in the unsavory tactics of its enemies. America acquired a sterling reputation because it refused to be Machiavellian.
We have drifted far from our ethical moorings. The war in Iraq has cost this country more than individual soldiers. It has also cost us our international reputation. We are no longer noble liberators committed to justice. Rather, we are now petulant rogues who wage war simply because we want to, without regard to ethics or international law. Our involvement in Iraq is a very dark chapter in American history. It is the chapter in which America became just another Machiavellian State determined to do its will, no matter the cost in blood or principle.
I wonder whether we will ever repair the damage we have done to ourselves.
Two weeks ago, I watched Paul Greengrass' searing Green Zone. Although the movie masquerades as a pure action thriller, it actually deeply criticizes American involvement in Iraq, especially the manufactured casus belli that led us to war. At several points during the movie,my emotions surged. I have always spoken out against the War in Iraq. I always considered it an illegitimate, illegal, unethical, imperialist venture without justification in law, justice or good policy. The movie showed raw American power at work. And that reawakened my slumbering vitriol about the war.
Green Zone opens in the din of an air raid. It is March 19, 2003, the day the U.S. air force began bombing Baghdad. Sirens wail. We hear the buildings shudder as explosions rip through the city. Iraqi men and women frantically run through hallways, shouting and screaming. We see lights flickering. Dust falls from ceilings. Windows break. Then the shot pans out to a vista over the city. Massive fireballs light up the night. Buildings burn. Anti-aircraft fire streaks into the sky. Jet engines and cruise missiles boom through the air before yet another explosion rips the skyline.
That scene choked me up. So that's American power, isn't it: The power to bomb a city into oblivion. The power to make civilians scramble in panic as the house next door explodes into a million pieces. The power to knock out electricity and destroy infrastructure. And for what? In hindsight, I knew there was no justification for the war. There were never any weapons of mass destruction. Iraq did not plan 9/11, nor did any Iraqis hijack the planes that attacked the United States. No, America flexed its muscles against Iraq simply because it could. It ignored the United Nations and its weapons inspectors. It acted with breathtaking defiance, even if it mumbled about "reliable independent intelligence" concerning an Iraqi nuclear arms program.
Worse, we're still there, seven years and 6000 American dead later. That's to say nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and countless more lives ruined for nothing.
War apologists will inevitably label be a socialist for making these observations. They will tell me that "intelligence was uncertain" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in early 2003, so it was better to be "safe than sorry." They will also tell me that America had "good reason" to attack Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant who tortured and murdered his own people. In fact, they will stress the fact that America "fights for freedom" around the world; even if we did not find nuclear weapons in Iraq, at least we gave Iraqis democracy.
I recoil from this facetious "freedom" explanation for the invasion. The argument is not just illogical; it also shows American involvement in Iraq for what it really is: A selective, hypocritical, arbitrary application of brute force. It is illogical because America does not really care about "worldwide freedom." In the first place, it is presumptuous to even suggest that "American-style freedom" can work in diverse cultures around the world. And even if such a thing as "freedom" were universal, why stop with Iraq? George W. Bush said that the war was necessary because "Iraqis needed freedom from a murderous tyrant who tortured and gassed his own people." Yet there are many nations across the globe that need the same treatment. The "freedom" rationale--if believed--would require U.S. military involvement in virtually every sub-Saharan African nation, as well as Saudi Arabia, several southeast Asian countries and even Russia. There are "tyrants" in all those nations who "murder their own people."
So why haven't we attacked all these other countries? If we truly care about "freedom," we should attack Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo, Pakistan and Malaysia. The fact that we haven't shows that our involvement in Iraq is purely selective. And because the freedom rationale is so weak, it begs the real question: Why Iraq? Only a naïve idiot could believe that America had a genuine interest in "Iraqis' freedom from tyranny." So what was the real reason?
For a long time, I thought that America invaded Iraq to gain access to its lucrative oil reserves. The cynic in me can never really suppress the thought. Yet after seven years of occupation, oil prices are no lower than they were in 2002. In fact, they have even spiked several times in the ensuing years. With oil men like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush in the White House, Iraq's oil must have been one reason why they decided to invade. In retrospect, it should have been an easy assignment: Knock out Saddam, capture the oil fields, set up some pipelines and start pumping.
But it did not work out that way. The war planners encountered a set of problems they did not anticipate: Sectarian strife. They must have underestimated how difficult it would be to occupy Iraq. They could not set up their pipelines or build their oil-carrying infrastructure because the Iraqis did not just roll over and allow the Americans to have their way with their country. They sabotaged roads, blew up tankers, ambushed convoys and beheaded "contractors." And because men like Donald Rumsfeld woefully miscalculated how much force would be needed to subdue Iraq, the U.S. military never had sufficient strength to pacify the countryside. Rumsfeld thought a "small, rapidly mobile force" with overwhelming air power could claim Iraq.
He was wrong. In the end, U.S. forces in Iraq wound up fighting a desperate "fire brigade" war in which they struggled to respond to local hotspots without bringing overall stability to the country. As a consequence, America could not realize its initial commercial war goal: Oil mercantilism.
Still, I am not writing today to summarize America's strategic failure in Iraq. Rather, I am writing to stress that America's failure was far larger than mere military stalemate. America sacrificed much more than young soldiers' blood to occupy Iraq. It also sacrificed its historically "moral high ground" in war by engaging in illegal, unethical behavior on an unprecedented scale. In the end, American occupiers showed themselves little better than the Baathist torturers they set out to depose in 2003.
Green Zone alludes to this. In brief, the movie follows an army officer (Matt Damon) assigned to locate nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" at various sites throughout Baghdad. After coming up empty every time, he begins to wonder whether his intelligence is sound. He decides to investigate his sources and gradually uncovers a tangled web of official deceit running all the way down from the Pentagon. When he realizes that the Pentagon has basically misled the army into supporting the war, he sets out to locate an Iraqi general who met with a senior Pentagon official (Greg Kinnear) prior to the war. The general told the Pentagon official that Iraq had no WMD program. The Pentagon official lied about what the general said and told Washington that Iraq did have such a program. To prevent the truth from emerging, the Pentagon official sends a hit squad to kill the general. Meanwhile, the army officer rushes to save him and expose the truth.
Green Zone's plotline makes for a good thriller. But it also makes a valuable point: America's case for war against Iraq was marred from the outset. It was built upon official deception. It threw ethics to the wind and committed American blood for fabricated reasons. The movie shows the American government working in a criminally underhanded manner. It shows senior American officials manipulating the truth and authorizing murder to conceal it. While Green Zone might just be a movie, it is certainly based on real events.
I thought America was supposed to be better than this. What ever happened to America as the "White Knight" of international politics? There was a time when America went to war for good things--and only as a last resort. There was a time when people around the world looked to America as a beacon of freedom and justice. During that time, no one would have dared think America could be tyrannical or evil. America did not lie, cheat, deceive, torture, murder or kill. It punished those who did while remaining true to its ethical principles. Hitler tortured, killed and invaded. America liberated the death camps and freed Europe from Nazi domination. That was noble and just. That was America's international reputation. That America could never act a villain.
Sadly, America did act a villain in Iraq. In a telling scene, Green Zone reminds us that American forces committed atrocities against Iraqi prisoners. It shows us a "detainee camp" in which U.S. forces hold allegedly "high-value" Iraqis in a stockade. It shows U.S. troops brutalizing prisoners with clubs, barking dogs and extremely loud music. It shows them forcing prisoners to sit in uncomfortable positions. We hear prisoners crying out in pain from darkened solitary cells. Some even lie bleeding on the floor without medical care.
Ironically, a sign over the stockade reads: "Camp So-and-So : Honor-Bound to Defend Freedom."
What kind of freedom is this? What kind of honor? It is as if the American army in Iraq still believed that it was the "White Knight" of 1945, even though its "intelligence division" members acted more like SS torturers than noble liberators.
There is no honor in torture or inhumane treatment. America said it waged war in Iraq to overthrow tyranny and torture. Yet within weeks, it began committing the same outrages on Iraqi prisoners that Saddam committed against his own people. Of course, war apologists will say that troops in the field must discover valuable battlefield intelligence "by any means necessary." That may be so as a practical matter. But America used to draw ethical strength from its refusal to engage in the unsavory tactics of its enemies. America acquired a sterling reputation because it refused to be Machiavellian.
We have drifted far from our ethical moorings. The war in Iraq has cost this country more than individual soldiers. It has also cost us our international reputation. We are no longer noble liberators committed to justice. Rather, we are now petulant rogues who wage war simply because we want to, without regard to ethics or international law. Our involvement in Iraq is a very dark chapter in American history. It is the chapter in which America became just another Machiavellian State determined to do its will, no matter the cost in blood or principle.
I wonder whether we will ever repair the damage we have done to ourselves.
Friday, December 11, 2009
HOUSING SPECIALS FOR TOUGH TIMES
REAL ESTATE MINUTE
At Reason, Commerce, Justice and Free Beer, we care about your well being. We understand that in tough economic times like these, even hard-working citizens find it difficult to secure basic necessities. Housing is a particularly difficult issue for many Americans. As employment shrinks, so too does the opportunity to locate affordable housing. For centuries, buying a home was the American dream. And now it is getting more and more difficult to realize that dream.
We understand that it is simply not possible to buy a home anymore. You need a lot of ready money to buy a home. And when you do not have a job, you don't have ready money. With unemployment now hovering around 20% nationwide, new homebuyers are virtually non-existent these days. Renting is the only way to go. In that light, we are pleased to offer our readers special information about rental properties.
We are committed to helping you survive this crisis. We encourage you to keep looking for work even if you've submitted 750 resumes since last fall and no one interviews you. We all need to dig deeper. We all need to cut expenses and save. We need to start hoarding coupons and looking for deals. When money is scarce, we need to adapt. That is why we are happy to provide some inside information about affordable housing deals. After all, you can't look for a job if you're homeless. You can't revise your resume if you live in a garbage can and spend all your time scrounging for discarded restaurant food.
Today, we are proud to associate with brokers from New York City's Manhattan Happy Homes Co., Inc. Like us, Happy Homes is committed to helping you find the home of your dreams--on a budget. Below, Happy Homes lists five excellent deals on New York rental properties. This is an exclusive offer. You--our readers--are getting a special first look at them before Happy Homes opens them to the public.
We are honored that Happy Homes cares about our readers. We sincerely hope that you will find a home today. And good luck on your job search! Keep your chin up. If you are determined, you will get a job, even on the 1000th try. Winners don't give up. From all of us here at Reason, Commerce, Justice and Free Beer, we salute our readers for their determination and resolve as they make their way through the storm.
Best wishes--and happy home hunting.
LISTING #1 - SPACIOUS LOFT!!! UNBELIEVABLE RENT!!! WON'T LAST!!!
You won't get space like this very often in New York! This is a must-see converted loft space for the adventurous tenant. It's a charming prewar building with reliable running water and optional heat. You will LOVE the period windows and high ceilings. Great ventilation and lighting from all sides, including skylights. Space is available for dishwasher, washing machine and dryer. Your friends will love the old-fashioned wall fixtures. Original flooring will blow you away. A little work will help. Wiring and plumbing negotiable. You even get FREE WATER! This is real, gritty New York living at its best. Pet-friendly building! And for $17,500 a month, it's a steal. Call today--it will be gone soon! (Two months' security, plus credit check, bank verification and board approval required for lease signing).LISTING # 2 - CHARMING STUDIO IN CHELSEA - A BARGAIN HUNTER'S DREAM
Now THIS is a deal! Cozy Chelsea studio in a beautiful modern building complete with functioning elevator and lighting. Great neighborhood near nightlife, schools, transit, bars, buses and grocery stores. AMAZING SQUARE FOOTAGE : Plenty of room for furniture and appliances, too. Simple design with great potential for decoration and entertainment. Electricity included in rent! Pets allowed! A perfect bachelor pad or first apartment for new college grads. Best of all, it's a budget apartment: Only $8600 a month!!! That's right, only $8600 a month!!! You won't get a great price like this ever again to live in such a hot neighborhood. Isn't it time to treat yourself? Come on down and live in one of New York's HOTTEST areas in a HOT apartment--all for a bargain price (Full employment history must be submitted along with application, plus four months' rent and a blood sample. Landlord reserves right to reject African tenants, financial ability notwithstanding).LISTING # 3 - OH YES - ORGANIC LIVING RIGHT IN CENTRAL PARK
Isn't it about time you went green? Well now you can with this UNBELIEVABLE rental smack dab in Central Park. Great views and lighting at all times. Heating optional (wood is available nearby for fires). Homemade plumbing system and spacious rooms make this apartment a MUST-SEE. Windows are original and charming. Pet friendly! Your dog will LOVE IT HERE! No worries about walk-ups here; it's all on the ground floor. This home is a MUST for culture and nature lovers. Plus you're just a stone's throw from the Guggenheim, 5th Avenue and all the bus lines. If you are committed to the environment AND you're chic, this is the apartment for you. Central Park address... does it get any better than that? And what a deal: It's yours for just $24,940 a month!!! Rent-stabilized!!! Call today. Don't let this one get away. (Tenant must replace all thatch, mud and dirt. Tenant is responsible for digging own privy. No exceptions. Only tenants with verifiable income over $450,000 per year (net) need apply).LISTING # 4 - EAST VILLAGE - JUST WOW !
Incredible East Village one-bedroom in TOTALLY HAPPENING tenement building near Tompkins Square park. If you want cool, you've come to the right place. All original staircases, windows, fixtures and plumbing. FREE walls and FREE doors. We're talking EAST VILLAGE HIP here, baby. Steps from AWESOME coffee shops, thrift stores and wine bars. Not far from train lines, grocery store and pharmacy. A little work would make this classic New York apartment EVEN BETTER. Perfect for the working professional with demanding standards. Perfect for dinner parties, guests and business meetings. If you're ready to GET ON THE VILLAGE SCENE, look no further. It gets no better than this. And all for a measly $11,500 per month!!! Believe me, you WILL NOT find a rent this low ANYWHERE else in the village. Do it now. Don't lose out. (Subject to board approval. Only applicants with credit scores over 900 will be considered. No unemployed people. No homosexuals unless they agree to pay two years' rent upfront and indemnify landlord against property damage arising from homosexual activity (including unauthorized decorating)).LISTING # 5 - MIDTOWN STUNNER - AMAZING VIEWS - GRANITE COUNTERTOPS
You will LOVE this cute and CAVERNOUS two-bedroom right off Bryant Park. Steps from 6th Avenue and Times Square. STUNNING all-granite countertops, modern kitchen and bath make this beauty a STEAL. Amazing West views provide great sunlight. Some electrical work needed, but not much. Original, modern flooring with a twist of natural charm. Your friends will LOVE the quaint lighting and brand new appliances. FREE running groundwater. Pets ALLOWED! Stalactites offer INCREDIBLE and UNIQUE decorating opportunities. Take it from us--when it comes to midtown, you will NOT find value like this for the money. When you're ready to dig your own hole in Manhattan, THIS IS IT. It's yours for just $37,000 a month. Don't wait! Call today! (Bathrooms and doors not included. Underground lake provides free plumbing. Tenant agrees to generate own electricity. Tenant agrees to hold landlord harmless for injuries resulting from cave collapse, falling rocks or subterranean animal attacks--no exceptions. Six months' security plus criminal background check required. Signed lease grants landlord right to sleep with anyone in tenant's household subject to notice. Failure to honor such right will result in material breach of lease and render tenant liable for full outstanding lease amount, plus treble damages. Tenant agrees never to bring any legal action against Landlord for any dispute arising out of this Lease for any reason whatsoever, including death).
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
DO WE SPEAK TO UNITE OR TO DECEIVE?
AN ESSAY
As I mentioned last week, I'm re-reading Aristotle's Politics. Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with many of his points about human beings and their motivations. That surprised me because I always took a prejudiced view against Aristotle. In college, I dismissed him because he was an "absolutist" about truth. But now that many years have passed--and now that I have read so much more--I approach Aristotle with more forgiveness. I do not read him with a smirk anymore. Rather, I read him for what he is: A classical metaphysician. I like some points; I don't like others. It's like reading anyone else.
Yet Aristotle is no average writer. He is a giant among Western philosophers. His views on virtually every subject became dogma for centuries. Men died challenging Aristotlean doctrines in the Catholic church during the Middle Ages. Others risked everything to dispute Aristotle's teachings about ethics and astronomy. As time went on, scientific advances dethroned Aristotle's pre-eminence in some areas. But in others, his influence remains strong--and still relevant. After all, Aristotle wrote about politics, ethics, human beings and beauty. These things cannot be reduced to mathematical fact. Rather, they constantly invite debate, interpretation and reassessment.
Aristotle's political work certainly has continued relevance. Like all the political philosophers who followed him, Aristotle begins by discussing human nature. Aristotle approaches the question with his usual confidence: He makes conclusions as if they were obvious, even if they are just assumptions. He also plays the biologist, constantly comparing humans to their analogues in nature.
I love any discussion about human nature. And I have always disagreed with Aristotle's view here.
Aristotle claims that men are "political animals...by nature." The Politics, Book I, ch. ii, para. 1253a1. He makes this conclusion by examining the key difference between men and beasts: Men have speech. He acknowledges that both animals and men have voice--cows can moo and dogs can bark to voice their feelings--but speech is unique to man.
This might not seem like a profound observation, but Aristotle's understanding of speech is remarkable. The consummate metaphysician, he argues that "speech has a single purpose" and no other. Namely, it enables men to "indicate what is useful and what is harmful," and "what is just or unjust." Id. at para. 1253a7. Finally, he draws the ultimate distinction between men and animals: "[H]umans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust." Id.
For Aristotle, then, speech has a justice function. It not only allows men to communicate their feelings, but it exists to help them find what is useful and just for all. This is the natural purpose of speech. It is imbued with a sensitivity for morality (good and evil), practicality (useful and not useful) as well as justice. These are profound concepts. And Aristotle speaks in absolute terms. There is one "good," one "evil," one "justice" and one "useful." In his view, speech enables man to find them all--and to organize States on that basis. Man is not only a speaking animal; his speech allows him to unite with other men to find universal justice in a useful society. What a remarkable assertion.
It is a remarkable assertion because it invites so much scorn. I naturally shy away from absolutes. Aristotle always offered me a tempting target because he reduces complex issues into absolute "sayings." His argument about speech--and human nature--strikes me as impossibly naive. Aristotle's philosophy of "specific purposes" (teleology) always leads to moments like this. After all, how can we say "speech is for justice and unity" when even brief life experience reveals that men often do not use speech for those purposes? Aristotle assumes that speech leads to cooperation and good. But life experience refutes this: Men lie. They don't cooperate. They don't tell the truth. They divide from one another and twist language to advance their narrow interests. And they certainly do not always use language to find justice. In most cases, language leads to injustice.
For his part, Aristotle would say that deceivers do "not use speech according to its purpose." This is a laughable objection, unfortunately: If language's "natural purpose" is to "find justice," then I would argue that people rarely use it "naturally."
Broadly speaking, Aristotle's theory of language reflects a good view of human nature. Aristotle believed that men naturally worked with one another to achieve a "good life." See Politics, Book I, ch. ii at para. 1252b27. He thought that speech gave them a natural tool to discover useful methods for securing a "good life," as well as to distinguish "good from evil," "right from wrong" and "just from unjust." Finally, he thought that men naturally cooperated with each other to achieve a "good life" filled with justice.
These are admirable sentiments. The problem is that Aristotle assumed everything he concluded. Every philosopher must assume certain basic principles in order to develop his theories about life. Aristotle's assumptions sound appealing, but they remain assumptions. For my part, I cannot assume that men are good by nature. And because of that, I cannot assume that men generally use speech for good purposes. Men unite with speech, but they also deceive with it. Men do good with speech; they also do bad. It is no answer to say--as Aristotle does--that they are merely "ignoring speech's natural purpose." There are no overreaching purposes. We simply attach them according to our individual sensitivities.
Aristotle thought that he could find truth by assigning specific purposes to everything open to human experience or imagination. And he assumed that one "truth" exists to be found: That was his worst assumption of all.
As I mentioned last week, I'm re-reading Aristotle's Politics. Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with many of his points about human beings and their motivations. That surprised me because I always took a prejudiced view against Aristotle. In college, I dismissed him because he was an "absolutist" about truth. But now that many years have passed--and now that I have read so much more--I approach Aristotle with more forgiveness. I do not read him with a smirk anymore. Rather, I read him for what he is: A classical metaphysician. I like some points; I don't like others. It's like reading anyone else.
Yet Aristotle is no average writer. He is a giant among Western philosophers. His views on virtually every subject became dogma for centuries. Men died challenging Aristotlean doctrines in the Catholic church during the Middle Ages. Others risked everything to dispute Aristotle's teachings about ethics and astronomy. As time went on, scientific advances dethroned Aristotle's pre-eminence in some areas. But in others, his influence remains strong--and still relevant. After all, Aristotle wrote about politics, ethics, human beings and beauty. These things cannot be reduced to mathematical fact. Rather, they constantly invite debate, interpretation and reassessment.
Aristotle's political work certainly has continued relevance. Like all the political philosophers who followed him, Aristotle begins by discussing human nature. Aristotle approaches the question with his usual confidence: He makes conclusions as if they were obvious, even if they are just assumptions. He also plays the biologist, constantly comparing humans to their analogues in nature.
I love any discussion about human nature. And I have always disagreed with Aristotle's view here.
Aristotle claims that men are "political animals...by nature." The Politics, Book I, ch. ii, para. 1253a1. He makes this conclusion by examining the key difference between men and beasts: Men have speech. He acknowledges that both animals and men have voice--cows can moo and dogs can bark to voice their feelings--but speech is unique to man.
This might not seem like a profound observation, but Aristotle's understanding of speech is remarkable. The consummate metaphysician, he argues that "speech has a single purpose" and no other. Namely, it enables men to "indicate what is useful and what is harmful," and "what is just or unjust." Id. at para. 1253a7. Finally, he draws the ultimate distinction between men and animals: "[H]umans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust." Id.
For Aristotle, then, speech has a justice function. It not only allows men to communicate their feelings, but it exists to help them find what is useful and just for all. This is the natural purpose of speech. It is imbued with a sensitivity for morality (good and evil), practicality (useful and not useful) as well as justice. These are profound concepts. And Aristotle speaks in absolute terms. There is one "good," one "evil," one "justice" and one "useful." In his view, speech enables man to find them all--and to organize States on that basis. Man is not only a speaking animal; his speech allows him to unite with other men to find universal justice in a useful society. What a remarkable assertion.
It is a remarkable assertion because it invites so much scorn. I naturally shy away from absolutes. Aristotle always offered me a tempting target because he reduces complex issues into absolute "sayings." His argument about speech--and human nature--strikes me as impossibly naive. Aristotle's philosophy of "specific purposes" (teleology) always leads to moments like this. After all, how can we say "speech is for justice and unity" when even brief life experience reveals that men often do not use speech for those purposes? Aristotle assumes that speech leads to cooperation and good. But life experience refutes this: Men lie. They don't cooperate. They don't tell the truth. They divide from one another and twist language to advance their narrow interests. And they certainly do not always use language to find justice. In most cases, language leads to injustice.
For his part, Aristotle would say that deceivers do "not use speech according to its purpose." This is a laughable objection, unfortunately: If language's "natural purpose" is to "find justice," then I would argue that people rarely use it "naturally."
Broadly speaking, Aristotle's theory of language reflects a good view of human nature. Aristotle believed that men naturally worked with one another to achieve a "good life." See Politics, Book I, ch. ii at para. 1252b27. He thought that speech gave them a natural tool to discover useful methods for securing a "good life," as well as to distinguish "good from evil," "right from wrong" and "just from unjust." Finally, he thought that men naturally cooperated with each other to achieve a "good life" filled with justice.
These are admirable sentiments. The problem is that Aristotle assumed everything he concluded. Every philosopher must assume certain basic principles in order to develop his theories about life. Aristotle's assumptions sound appealing, but they remain assumptions. For my part, I cannot assume that men are good by nature. And because of that, I cannot assume that men generally use speech for good purposes. Men unite with speech, but they also deceive with it. Men do good with speech; they also do bad. It is no answer to say--as Aristotle does--that they are merely "ignoring speech's natural purpose." There are no overreaching purposes. We simply attach them according to our individual sensitivities.
Aristotle thought that he could find truth by assigning specific purposes to everything open to human experience or imagination. And he assumed that one "truth" exists to be found: That was his worst assumption of all.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
A LEASE EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND
REAL ESTATE TIPS FROM THE PROS
By : Mr. Gabriel F. Ziegenbaum, Senior Partner, The Equity Family LLC (A Real Estate Holding Company Specializing in Must-Do Sales); Licensed Market Broker; Licensed Fisherman, Town of Poughkeepsie, New York.
At The Equity Family LLC, we sell and lease attractive properties throughout the New York metropolitan area. We are committed to providing quality services to our customers. That means dealing fairly, fully and honestly. When our agents show properties, we tell the whole story. And when deal time comes, we make sure that our customers know everything they need to know.
We believe that fairness is the best way to do business. We understand that buying or leasing a home can be stressful. That is why we strive to make the experience as easy as possible with our "Fair Shake Guarantee™." We guarantee our customers that they will get the fairest possible deal and price allowable under applicable New York State law. We understand that many people are cynical about property sales. But we buck the trend: We are proud to make a commitment to fairness.
We think that customers should know what they are signing. All too often, buyers and renters hastily read 45-page leases or sale contracts without really looking at what they say. After all, who knows what the "Parol Evidence Rule notwithstanding applicable New York exclusions, et seq." means, or even "the right to quiet enjoyment having been waived, it being the intention of Lessor to obviate all Rights appurtenant hereto, there shall be no cause of action, in either law or equity, as against that certain Lessor as hereinabove named and described." We do not believe that sellers should confuse customers with legal gobbeldeygook. Rather, we think that buyers and renters should know exactly what the contract says.
Our lawyers do not like our "Fair Shake Guarantee™." They say it leaves open too many liabilities. They even say that it is much more profitable to write contracts inscrutably than clearly. Although we agree that profits are important, we think integrity is more important. We want our customers to know exactly what they are signing, even if that scares them away from a deal. For us, honesty is the best policy. And contrary to our lawyers' admonishments, we have stayed profitable every year since we opened our doors. In our view, honesty is its own reward.
To demonstrate our commitment to fair dealing and transparency in property sales and rentals, we would like to share our standard lease format with the public. This lease tells potential renters everything they need to know about their obligations, rights and powers in a property relationship. It also tells them what their landlords can and cannot do under law. We believe that the key to economic prosperity is knowledge. That is why we want to tell the public about our standard-form lease. Our economy grows when everyone does business with confidence. When customers see that The Equity Family guarantees fairness, every customer will feel confident. Nothing hurts business more than a suspicious client base. Here at the Equity Family, we make sure that no one stays suspicious. We tell everyone exactly what the contract says in plain, layman's English. You don't need a lawyer to understand our lease. You won't find any "pursuant" or "notwithstanding same" in our lease. It won't even take you 10 minutes to read.
Do business with confidence. Read this lease. You will never have to read another one; every lease says exactly what this lease says. Know your rights. Know your responsibilities. And understand your place in every commercial relationship. Because confident customers are good customers (R).
LEASE
1. The Equity Family LLC ("Lessor") promises to allow You ("Lessee") to remain on a property it owns, namely: 12 Church Avenue, Apartment 4C, New York, New York ("Property"), from January 1, 2010 until December 31, 2010.
2. In return for Lessor's promise to allow Lessee to remain on Property, Lessee promises to pay four thousand three hundred dollars ($4300) on the first of every month, beginning January 1, 2010, until December 1, 2010.
3. Lessor has almost all advantages under this Lease.
4. Whenever unexpected expenses arise, chances are Lessee will have to pay for them.
5. In case of dispute, it is presumed that Lessor will win, unless a court says otherwise.
6. Lessee has no right to sue Lessor for anything, unless a court says otherwise.
7. If a court says something against Lessor's interests, Lessee agrees to pay for all Lessor's costs.
8. Lessee agrees that there is nothing is unfair about this Lease. Lessee would not have signed it otherwise. As a result, Lessee waives any claim that this Lease is "unconscionable" or "unenforceable."
9. Lessor promises to provide a safe Property, but will contest any claim that anything about the Property is unsafe, and even blame Lessee for causing the problem in the first place.
10. Anything Lessee does to improve Property will inure to Lessor's benefit. EXAMPLE: If Lessee buys a new fridge and installs it on Property, the fridge immediately belongs to Lessor. Lessee cannot sue Lessor for this result, no matter what the law or Constitution says. It is not theft. It is a contract--and Lessee signed it. Theft is illegal. Contracts are legal.
11. If Lessee breaks this Lease, he owes Lessor every month's unpaid rent. Lessor has no obligation to honor any request for mercy or mitigation. EXAMPLE: You break the lease on September 1, 2010. That means you owe rent for September, October, November and December, each at $4300 per month: You owe $17,200. If you don't pay, Lessor will get a judgment against you and tap into your bank account to get every nickel you owe: That's the law.
12. Lessor understands that he enjoys most of the power under this Lease. Lessee understands that Lessee enjoys very little power under this Lease. In all cases not specifically addressed in this Lease, Lessor shall prevail, unless a court says otherwise.
13. Lessee may not destroy Property. If he does, he must pay for all repairs at a double rate. If Lessee refuses to pay, Lessor gets a default judgment against Lessee and can tap into his bank account to get whatever amount he wants. EXAMPLE: Your dog destroys Lessor's parquet floors with urine. Lessor's contractor charges $5400 to repair it. You owe $10,800. You don't pay. The Court enters judgment against you for $10,800. The Sheriff authorizes Lessor to garnish your bank account and transfer $10,800 to Lessor.
14. This is the final agreement. It can't be changed, unless Lessor wants to change it.
_______________________
THE EQUITY FAMILY LLC
LESSOR
________________________
WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS
LESSEE
______________________
PERSON WATCHING YOU SIGN FOR $1.05
NOTARY
Monday, September 7, 2009
WAR, DEATH AND TRUTH : PUBLISHING CASUALTY PHOTOGRAPHS
AN ESSAY
Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson recently published a “disturbing image” in the New York Times. See http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/behind-13/. Specifically, she dared to snap a picture of a U.S. Marine moments after he suffered a mortal injury in Afghanistan. The image shows two comrades struggling to stabilize him. His lips are weakly parted; he stares at the ground as if in shock. His bloody leg (or stump) is clearly visible. His rifle lies powerless at his side. According to the article that accompanies the picture, the Marine died several days later. His father learned that Ms. Jacobson had the picture and asked her not to publish it. He did not want the picture to “sully the memory of his son.”
Ms. Jacobson published the picture anyway. Defense Secretary Robert Gates angrily denounced her decision. Although he acknowledged she had a “legal and constitutional right” to publish it, he claimed that “common decency” and “taste” should have stayed her hand. In response, Ms. Jacobson pointed out that she complied with the Defense Department rule for publishing “U.S. casualty photographs,” namely, only after the Department confirmed the casualty and notified the soldier’s family. This satisfied her sole legal obligation. From a strictly legal perspective, the fact that the Marine’s family objected to publication made no difference; Ms. Jacobson followed the only rule that constrained her.
Not surprisingly, Ms. Jacobson’s decision sparked a heated debate on the New York Times’ website. The debate broke into two camps: (1) Those who believe that the press must always respect a family’s wishes and (2) those who demand to see the “truth of war” uncensored and uncut. One angry commenter even went so far as to say that “acts like this” (ie, photographers defying military families’ wishes) were reason to “revoke the First Amendment.” But another applauded Ms. Jacobson for delivering a “dose of truth” about a war that seems all-too distant and “sanitized” in American eyes.
This is not a new debate. Americans have always been queasy about seeing pictures of their own men dead (or dying) on the battlefield. We have been in many wars since the advent of photography. Matthew Brady was the first man to photograph dead soldiers after the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War. His work sparked outrage and disgust. He said he was merely trying to show “what really happens in war” beyond all the glorious rhetoric and saber-rattling. Despite his commitment to “telling the truth” about war, the U.S. military took steps to curtail such publications. These efforts culminated in complicated rules about publishing “U.S. casualty images.” These are the rules that Ms. Jacobson’s image now calls into debate.
Interestingly, the military’s rules about publishing “U.S. casualty images” only apply to U.S. service personnel. If a civilian is killed, there is no rule prohibiting a journalist from immediately publishing the image. Similarly, if a soldier from the enemy army dies, a journalist does not have to wait until his family is notified. And naturally the journalist need not heed the foreign soldier’s family’s objections to publication (if they even know their son has died fighting the Americans). The U.S. military defends its rule because it wants to “uphold the dignity and memory of troops who give their lives for their country.” Yet that concern does not apply to any other human being who dies as our troops fulfill their mission. At the same time, the rule leads to a skewed impression: Americans only get to see dead enemy troops and civilians, but never dead Americans. In the end, this blinds the American public to the brutal reality of war. After all, American troops die in Iraq and Afghanistan every day. We know this from the “official casualty rolls.” Yet those rolls do not begin to tell the same story as pictures showing soldiers dying.
If America wants to wage war, it should know the costs. War is not about animated maps and strategic objectives narrated on the FOX News Channel. Nor is it even about geopolitical balancing or justice. Rather, for the men who fight war, it is about fear, carnage, brutality and death. For the men who fight war, it is an agonizing sensory experience. The sights, sounds and sensations of war irreversibly alter those who experience them. (See, e.g., All Quiet on the Western Front). Yet these sensory impressions rarely make their way back home for everyone else to see. War veterans cannot even start to “explain” what it is like to be in combat and to see young men suddenly die. Yet photographs can at least partially convey the sensory impressions that language can never capture. In so doing, they tell an essential story that would otherwise be forever lost. Put simply, when the government censors images capturing the visual, visceral, unforgiving “essence of war,” it deludes the public. If the public really wants to know the sacrifices men make on the battlefield, it should know about the uncensored brutality they see every day.
Yet many strongly disagree with this assertion. They say that the public’s “right to know” about war’s brutality must yield to the individual soldier’s family’s interest in freedom from the emotional turmoil that flows from seeing their dying son paraded in newspapers. They say that military families have a right to “cherish certain memories” about sons who die in combat, even if those memories are inaccurate or false. While it is true that military families will suffer immense pain upon seeing such images, their pain must be compared with the broader public interest in knowing the true cost of war. I venture that it is better for the public to know how bloody and senseless war is than to fall into ignorant delusion about its human price. The only way to truly inform the public about war’s price is to inflict additional emotional pain on the families of the individual soldiers whose dying bodies we see captured on film.
This sounds harsh. Yet this is the only way to drive home the cost of war. Nothing else even remotely tells the story.
My heart goes out to the father who lost his son in Afghanistan. I am truly sorry that he must bear the additional burden of seeing his son’s final moments in a photograph. I am also sorry that the public, too, can now see that image. But I venture that this image does far more than inflict individual emotional pain on those who knew the soldier who died. It does not disparage his memory, nor does it dilute his sacrifice. Rather, it honestly shows what he endured. It shows what war does to men. It reveals that there is nothing glorious or heroic about war. In so doing, it educates the public. When the public knows what war really costs—in visual, visceral, human terms—we can only hope that they will be less eager to start them in the future.
America needs to understand that wars have costs. Yet rules such as the military’s ban on “casualty photographs” blind us to those costs. They also deceive the public into believing that “we do the killing, but not the dying.” Ms. Jacobson’s photograph unsettles these assumptions, and rightly so. It illustrates that war is not fun for anyone, American or not. It is important for Americans to know that before launching another military excursion somewhere in the world.
Europeans learned the cost of war between 1914 and 1945. That is why they criticize us so much for our willingness to start new ones.
Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson recently published a “disturbing image” in the New York Times. See http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/behind-13/. Specifically, she dared to snap a picture of a U.S. Marine moments after he suffered a mortal injury in Afghanistan. The image shows two comrades struggling to stabilize him. His lips are weakly parted; he stares at the ground as if in shock. His bloody leg (or stump) is clearly visible. His rifle lies powerless at his side. According to the article that accompanies the picture, the Marine died several days later. His father learned that Ms. Jacobson had the picture and asked her not to publish it. He did not want the picture to “sully the memory of his son.”
Ms. Jacobson published the picture anyway. Defense Secretary Robert Gates angrily denounced her decision. Although he acknowledged she had a “legal and constitutional right” to publish it, he claimed that “common decency” and “taste” should have stayed her hand. In response, Ms. Jacobson pointed out that she complied with the Defense Department rule for publishing “U.S. casualty photographs,” namely, only after the Department confirmed the casualty and notified the soldier’s family. This satisfied her sole legal obligation. From a strictly legal perspective, the fact that the Marine’s family objected to publication made no difference; Ms. Jacobson followed the only rule that constrained her.
Not surprisingly, Ms. Jacobson’s decision sparked a heated debate on the New York Times’ website. The debate broke into two camps: (1) Those who believe that the press must always respect a family’s wishes and (2) those who demand to see the “truth of war” uncensored and uncut. One angry commenter even went so far as to say that “acts like this” (ie, photographers defying military families’ wishes) were reason to “revoke the First Amendment.” But another applauded Ms. Jacobson for delivering a “dose of truth” about a war that seems all-too distant and “sanitized” in American eyes.
This is not a new debate. Americans have always been queasy about seeing pictures of their own men dead (or dying) on the battlefield. We have been in many wars since the advent of photography. Matthew Brady was the first man to photograph dead soldiers after the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War. His work sparked outrage and disgust. He said he was merely trying to show “what really happens in war” beyond all the glorious rhetoric and saber-rattling. Despite his commitment to “telling the truth” about war, the U.S. military took steps to curtail such publications. These efforts culminated in complicated rules about publishing “U.S. casualty images.” These are the rules that Ms. Jacobson’s image now calls into debate.
Interestingly, the military’s rules about publishing “U.S. casualty images” only apply to U.S. service personnel. If a civilian is killed, there is no rule prohibiting a journalist from immediately publishing the image. Similarly, if a soldier from the enemy army dies, a journalist does not have to wait until his family is notified. And naturally the journalist need not heed the foreign soldier’s family’s objections to publication (if they even know their son has died fighting the Americans). The U.S. military defends its rule because it wants to “uphold the dignity and memory of troops who give their lives for their country.” Yet that concern does not apply to any other human being who dies as our troops fulfill their mission. At the same time, the rule leads to a skewed impression: Americans only get to see dead enemy troops and civilians, but never dead Americans. In the end, this blinds the American public to the brutal reality of war. After all, American troops die in Iraq and Afghanistan every day. We know this from the “official casualty rolls.” Yet those rolls do not begin to tell the same story as pictures showing soldiers dying.
If America wants to wage war, it should know the costs. War is not about animated maps and strategic objectives narrated on the FOX News Channel. Nor is it even about geopolitical balancing or justice. Rather, for the men who fight war, it is about fear, carnage, brutality and death. For the men who fight war, it is an agonizing sensory experience. The sights, sounds and sensations of war irreversibly alter those who experience them. (See, e.g., All Quiet on the Western Front). Yet these sensory impressions rarely make their way back home for everyone else to see. War veterans cannot even start to “explain” what it is like to be in combat and to see young men suddenly die. Yet photographs can at least partially convey the sensory impressions that language can never capture. In so doing, they tell an essential story that would otherwise be forever lost. Put simply, when the government censors images capturing the visual, visceral, unforgiving “essence of war,” it deludes the public. If the public really wants to know the sacrifices men make on the battlefield, it should know about the uncensored brutality they see every day.
Yet many strongly disagree with this assertion. They say that the public’s “right to know” about war’s brutality must yield to the individual soldier’s family’s interest in freedom from the emotional turmoil that flows from seeing their dying son paraded in newspapers. They say that military families have a right to “cherish certain memories” about sons who die in combat, even if those memories are inaccurate or false. While it is true that military families will suffer immense pain upon seeing such images, their pain must be compared with the broader public interest in knowing the true cost of war. I venture that it is better for the public to know how bloody and senseless war is than to fall into ignorant delusion about its human price. The only way to truly inform the public about war’s price is to inflict additional emotional pain on the families of the individual soldiers whose dying bodies we see captured on film.
This sounds harsh. Yet this is the only way to drive home the cost of war. Nothing else even remotely tells the story.
My heart goes out to the father who lost his son in Afghanistan. I am truly sorry that he must bear the additional burden of seeing his son’s final moments in a photograph. I am also sorry that the public, too, can now see that image. But I venture that this image does far more than inflict individual emotional pain on those who knew the soldier who died. It does not disparage his memory, nor does it dilute his sacrifice. Rather, it honestly shows what he endured. It shows what war does to men. It reveals that there is nothing glorious or heroic about war. In so doing, it educates the public. When the public knows what war really costs—in visual, visceral, human terms—we can only hope that they will be less eager to start them in the future.
America needs to understand that wars have costs. Yet rules such as the military’s ban on “casualty photographs” blind us to those costs. They also deceive the public into believing that “we do the killing, but not the dying.” Ms. Jacobson’s photograph unsettles these assumptions, and rightly so. It illustrates that war is not fun for anyone, American or not. It is important for Americans to know that before launching another military excursion somewhere in the world.
Europeans learned the cost of war between 1914 and 1945. That is why they criticize us so much for our willingness to start new ones.
Friday, September 4, 2009
ADVERTISING & INFORMATION : SIMPLE WORKS
AN ESSAY
I noticed something new about advertising as I rode the New York subway this morning. I thought I had written all I could about advertising, but just when I thought I had said enough, a new idea spawned in my head. After all, advertisers stop at nothing to kindle our commercial urges. As such, they resort to any tactic to get our attention and make us want to spend money. The Supreme Court actually grants advertisers full freedom to say whatever they want, provided they are not “deceptive, false or misleading.” Yet that is a meaningless exception, because it is very easy to provide misleading information without “actually lying.” And it is easy to lie simply by keeping quiet about bad stuff.
But today I do not write to analyze advertising theory or constitutional standards. Rather, I write to make a simple point, namely, that all advertisements do the same thing: They selectively provide an “informational tidbit,” which in turn makes a suggestion to the listener. The suggestion is always the same: “Now come give me your money.” Advertisers provide information—perhaps largely true, perhaps half-true, perhaps not true at all—for a purpose: To entice you to give them money. Advertisers do not aim to educate. They do not want you to “know more” or develop into a more “enriched person” with the information they provide. No, they want to “inform you” only to the extent necessary that you feel compelled to spend your money on them. It is strictly instrumental.
Consider these examples. As I sat on the train today, I looked up and saw three distinct commercial messages. The first was an admonishment from Duane Reade, a drugstore. Its message: “There are a bazillion germs on the pole you’re holding.” Broadly speaking, this is information. Maybe some people don’t realize that contagions congregate in crowded public spaces like the subway. Yet Duane Reade doesn’t care whether they’ve just educated you. They don’t care whether you’ve just become a more well-informed person because you heard their message about germs. No, they want you to take the information and translate it into commercial activity. Namely, they want you to say: “Omigod! There are germs all over the place, so I should go to the Duane Reade and start buying things!” Duane Reade is not trying to inspire the world’s next great microbiologist with this information. It is trying to lure an average schmuck into the store to buy cough drops.
In the next message, a local college advertised: “95% of people without college degrees never obtain jobs with salaries over $40,000 a year.” This is information, too. It might be accurate; maybe it isn’t. Still, it sounds relatively accurate (it has a percentage in it…wow), and in advertising, appearances are just as important as—if not more important than— “truth.” No one on the subway is going to check facts anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. Yet the local college does not provide this information to alert its listeners to demographic trends or educational crises in the United States. It wants to spark a desire in its listeners to start spending some money on tuition. After all, according to this information, if you don’t have a college degree, you stand a 95% chance never to make over $40,000 a year. You want to make more than $40,000 a year, so you’d better get a college degree with us. Again, the advertiser here provides information for an instrumental purpose: “People without college degrees don’t make much money. We can give you a college degree. Now give us your money.” Simple.
Finally, an Upper East Side “enrichment group” called the “Center for Practical Philosophy” blared this message: “No other ad on the subway will make you as happy as this one.” The center revealed that it offered classes to teach “working students” about “reason, beauty and justice” (no commerce or free beer; note that), and that its classes would lead to “happiness” by “harnessing the power of attention.” This was not typical advertising fare (ie, it wasn’t hawking trinkets or dental services), but it followed the same formula as any other. Specifically, it provided information about “classes” and those classes can make you “happier than other ads on the subway.” People want to be happy. Again, the message provides information in order to make the ultimate suggestion: “Now give me your money.” You want to be happy, don’t you? Well, here’s some information about happiness classes. Now you know where to spend your money if you want to learn how to be happy.
“Practical philosophy.” That made me laugh. In my experience, the two concepts mutually exclude each other. You’re either philosophical or practical, but not both. If you’re practical, you don’t like “philosophical bullshit” because it “doesn’t get things done.” If you’re philosophical, you don’t like “everyday, boring, banal practical shit” because it’s not “deep” or “sophisticated.” You can’t have it both ways. Yet this advertisement dared to cross the line. It made philosophy—which is generally antithetical to commerce—a commodity to be bought. On the other hand, this is New York. Everything is for sale here, even things that traditionally can’t be bought, sold or “commercialized.” We have more banks than guys named Bob in this town. In that light, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that philosophy is for sale, too.
But enough about philosophy. The point is that advertising is insidious because it channels information for a limited purpose, namely, to enrich the speaker. Human beings cannot know everything. They have short-range senses; they can only learn so much by direct perception. Everything else requires reliance on second-hand reports and “information sources” like advertising. In many ways, we are all hopelessly dependent on external information sources. Those who possess more information hold more power. That is the nature of things. Advertisers do not want us to “learn about the world” or even expand our consciousness with the information they selectively dispense. They want us merely to learn a few suggestive “facts” then fork over some money.
Ironically, it doesn’t matter whether advertisers provide “accurate” or “true” information to their listeners. Truth is largely irrelevant in commerce; it only matters when a commercial actor must be truthful to avoid a loss. Advertisers, too, provide accurate information if the law threatens punishment or if they want to outdo a competitor. But truth is never the ultimate aim behind advertising. Rather, the only goal is to incite an urge to buy in the listener. Selectively providing “facts” can create that urge. Whether the facts are “true” does not affect whether they will spark a “commercial urge.” In many ways, then, advertising targets human emotion more than reason. Advertisers want to incite a reaction, a need, a desire, an itch to buy. These are not entirely reasonable responses to information. To the contrary, they are childish, even animal responses: Show a dog a bone and the dog will want it; show an average American an all-NFL cable package and he will want it, too. In fact, if consumers had access to all information, they probably would have reason to avoid virtually every seller in the market. In short, advertising would not work if people were too well-informed. And it certainly would not work if people used their reason all the time.
I write all this because advertising literally surrounds us. Commercial speakers speak more than any others. They buy airtime. Their billboards leer over us. Their television messages interrupt us every five minutes. Their radio broadcasts barge in on our music. In short, they own our senses, besieging our eyes and ears with generally unreliable information calculated to arouse our commercial urges. No matter the medium, they all function in the same way: They selectively provide information for an instrumental purpose, then suggest “Now come give us your money.” Some advertisers spark more commercial urges in more people than others. They are called “effective advertisers.” But whether effective or not, they are all doing the same thing. And I venture that there is nothing noble or sophisticated about it.
After all, what do I care whether a private company succeeds in luring more people to spend their money? Who cares? Will anyone even remember? This is the never-ending “commerce dance.” Advertising provides an endless beat for the dance. It just keeps droning on day after day, generation after generation, following the same old formula: Provide information… suggest “Come on down and spend your money…”
In sum, there is nothing to it. It is all the same.
I noticed something new about advertising as I rode the New York subway this morning. I thought I had written all I could about advertising, but just when I thought I had said enough, a new idea spawned in my head. After all, advertisers stop at nothing to kindle our commercial urges. As such, they resort to any tactic to get our attention and make us want to spend money. The Supreme Court actually grants advertisers full freedom to say whatever they want, provided they are not “deceptive, false or misleading.” Yet that is a meaningless exception, because it is very easy to provide misleading information without “actually lying.” And it is easy to lie simply by keeping quiet about bad stuff.
But today I do not write to analyze advertising theory or constitutional standards. Rather, I write to make a simple point, namely, that all advertisements do the same thing: They selectively provide an “informational tidbit,” which in turn makes a suggestion to the listener. The suggestion is always the same: “Now come give me your money.” Advertisers provide information—perhaps largely true, perhaps half-true, perhaps not true at all—for a purpose: To entice you to give them money. Advertisers do not aim to educate. They do not want you to “know more” or develop into a more “enriched person” with the information they provide. No, they want to “inform you” only to the extent necessary that you feel compelled to spend your money on them. It is strictly instrumental.
Consider these examples. As I sat on the train today, I looked up and saw three distinct commercial messages. The first was an admonishment from Duane Reade, a drugstore. Its message: “There are a bazillion germs on the pole you’re holding.” Broadly speaking, this is information. Maybe some people don’t realize that contagions congregate in crowded public spaces like the subway. Yet Duane Reade doesn’t care whether they’ve just educated you. They don’t care whether you’ve just become a more well-informed person because you heard their message about germs. No, they want you to take the information and translate it into commercial activity. Namely, they want you to say: “Omigod! There are germs all over the place, so I should go to the Duane Reade and start buying things!” Duane Reade is not trying to inspire the world’s next great microbiologist with this information. It is trying to lure an average schmuck into the store to buy cough drops.
In the next message, a local college advertised: “95% of people without college degrees never obtain jobs with salaries over $40,000 a year.” This is information, too. It might be accurate; maybe it isn’t. Still, it sounds relatively accurate (it has a percentage in it…wow), and in advertising, appearances are just as important as—if not more important than— “truth.” No one on the subway is going to check facts anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. Yet the local college does not provide this information to alert its listeners to demographic trends or educational crises in the United States. It wants to spark a desire in its listeners to start spending some money on tuition. After all, according to this information, if you don’t have a college degree, you stand a 95% chance never to make over $40,000 a year. You want to make more than $40,000 a year, so you’d better get a college degree with us. Again, the advertiser here provides information for an instrumental purpose: “People without college degrees don’t make much money. We can give you a college degree. Now give us your money.” Simple.
Finally, an Upper East Side “enrichment group” called the “Center for Practical Philosophy” blared this message: “No other ad on the subway will make you as happy as this one.” The center revealed that it offered classes to teach “working students” about “reason, beauty and justice” (no commerce or free beer; note that), and that its classes would lead to “happiness” by “harnessing the power of attention.” This was not typical advertising fare (ie, it wasn’t hawking trinkets or dental services), but it followed the same formula as any other. Specifically, it provided information about “classes” and those classes can make you “happier than other ads on the subway.” People want to be happy. Again, the message provides information in order to make the ultimate suggestion: “Now give me your money.” You want to be happy, don’t you? Well, here’s some information about happiness classes. Now you know where to spend your money if you want to learn how to be happy.
“Practical philosophy.” That made me laugh. In my experience, the two concepts mutually exclude each other. You’re either philosophical or practical, but not both. If you’re practical, you don’t like “philosophical bullshit” because it “doesn’t get things done.” If you’re philosophical, you don’t like “everyday, boring, banal practical shit” because it’s not “deep” or “sophisticated.” You can’t have it both ways. Yet this advertisement dared to cross the line. It made philosophy—which is generally antithetical to commerce—a commodity to be bought. On the other hand, this is New York. Everything is for sale here, even things that traditionally can’t be bought, sold or “commercialized.” We have more banks than guys named Bob in this town. In that light, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that philosophy is for sale, too.
But enough about philosophy. The point is that advertising is insidious because it channels information for a limited purpose, namely, to enrich the speaker. Human beings cannot know everything. They have short-range senses; they can only learn so much by direct perception. Everything else requires reliance on second-hand reports and “information sources” like advertising. In many ways, we are all hopelessly dependent on external information sources. Those who possess more information hold more power. That is the nature of things. Advertisers do not want us to “learn about the world” or even expand our consciousness with the information they selectively dispense. They want us merely to learn a few suggestive “facts” then fork over some money.
Ironically, it doesn’t matter whether advertisers provide “accurate” or “true” information to their listeners. Truth is largely irrelevant in commerce; it only matters when a commercial actor must be truthful to avoid a loss. Advertisers, too, provide accurate information if the law threatens punishment or if they want to outdo a competitor. But truth is never the ultimate aim behind advertising. Rather, the only goal is to incite an urge to buy in the listener. Selectively providing “facts” can create that urge. Whether the facts are “true” does not affect whether they will spark a “commercial urge.” In many ways, then, advertising targets human emotion more than reason. Advertisers want to incite a reaction, a need, a desire, an itch to buy. These are not entirely reasonable responses to information. To the contrary, they are childish, even animal responses: Show a dog a bone and the dog will want it; show an average American an all-NFL cable package and he will want it, too. In fact, if consumers had access to all information, they probably would have reason to avoid virtually every seller in the market. In short, advertising would not work if people were too well-informed. And it certainly would not work if people used their reason all the time.
I write all this because advertising literally surrounds us. Commercial speakers speak more than any others. They buy airtime. Their billboards leer over us. Their television messages interrupt us every five minutes. Their radio broadcasts barge in on our music. In short, they own our senses, besieging our eyes and ears with generally unreliable information calculated to arouse our commercial urges. No matter the medium, they all function in the same way: They selectively provide information for an instrumental purpose, then suggest “Now come give us your money.” Some advertisers spark more commercial urges in more people than others. They are called “effective advertisers.” But whether effective or not, they are all doing the same thing. And I venture that there is nothing noble or sophisticated about it.
After all, what do I care whether a private company succeeds in luring more people to spend their money? Who cares? Will anyone even remember? This is the never-ending “commerce dance.” Advertising provides an endless beat for the dance. It just keeps droning on day after day, generation after generation, following the same old formula: Provide information… suggest “Come on down and spend your money…”
In sum, there is nothing to it. It is all the same.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
PROSAIC PEOPLE’S FEDERAL ALLIANCE FOR THE STATEMENT OF VAGUELY PROFOUND, PRETENTIOUS-SOUNDING AND PERFECTLY OBVIOUS TRUTHS
POLITICAL PARTIES FOR A CHANGING WORLD
By : Prof. Martin F. Fillmore, Ph.D. (English Literature), Party Spokesman and Chief Rhetorician; Former Chief Executive Officer, B. R. Blandings Publishing Co., Inc., purveyors of simple literature for simple minds; Professor of Writing (Stanford University); Screenwriter; Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Literature (the novel “Waiting” (1997)).
We live. We die. We see. We have eyes. As humans, we experience. We were born. We have parents. That means we have mothers. We also have fathers. We have families. We are one. We are Americans. We live in a country. It is called America. Indians used to live here. Now we do.
We are the Prosaic People’s Federal Alliance for the Statement of Vaguely Profound, Pretentious-Sounding and Perfectly Obvious Truths. That means we tell the truth. Truth means we do not lie. We say things the way they are. Often, things are simple. We tell simple truths. Sometimes the truth is vaguely profound. Sometimes it is not. Whether profound or not, we tell the truth. The truth unites us. The truth is now.
Often people do not say things because they sound too obvious. But we are not afraid to do exactly that. We are not afraid to say that trees bloom in spring. We are not afraid to say that snow falls in winter. And we are not afraid to say that most people have two hands. In life, even obvious things must be said. We gain nothing through vagueness. We must communicate. What is obvious to one man may not be so to another.
We can solve problems if we communicate. There is no need to be vague. We are prosaic. We do not aim to confuse. We simply say what is obvious. The truth is obvious. As prosaic people, we declare obvious truths. We do not lie. We might not impress, but we do not lie, either. In politics, simplicity works. It is better to say obvious truths than subtle lies. We are not afraid.
Politics involve many people. We are the people. We stand united. We hold beliefs. We cherish ideas. We all have different ideas because we are all different people. We are different, yet the same. We are different because we all have different names. We are the same because we are all people. In this country, it is OK to be both different and the same. There is no need to fight. Fighting involves disagreement. Disagreement involves intolerance. But we do not disagree. We are not intolerant. We have strength in ourselves. We are not weak because the truth is strong. We are not weak because we tell the truth.
But we do not tell complex truths. We tell perfectly obvious truths. We say that the country is broke because it is. Our country is broke because it owes more money than it has. Broke means you have no money. If you owe more than you have, you have no money. That means you are broke. We are not afraid to say it. It is true. We do not shrink from truth. Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it does not. We say it no matter what. We may be prosaic, but we say what is true. We do not misrepresent or deceive. We say what we see. We see that the country is broke. That’s why we say it’s broke. That makes us different from other political parties. We value truth. They don’t.
White people live in America. So do black people and Asian people. White people have white skin and various hair colors. Black people have black skin and black hair. Asians have parents from Asia and black hair. But we are all people. We are all Americans. We all live in a country called America. No one can argue that. We do not shy away from saying it. Some call us stupid. But are we lying? Who can say that people who live in America are not Americans? And who can say that a person with white skin is not white? We are not afraid to say what is obvious. We do not need complexity.
We can solve problems if we keep them simple. Complex means there is too much information at one time. Complex means the information is hard to understand. Simple means there is not much information at one time. It also means that it is not hard to understand. We trust the people. People do not want complexity. They want simplicity. Life is complex enough. They don’t want more complexity. We are prosaic. That means we tell simple, obvious truths. Simple, obvious truths make people feel good because they are easy to understand. We want the people to feel good about their politicians. We do not want deception. We do not want bitterness. We just want simple, obvious truths. The sun is hot. Ice is cold. The sky is blue. What more do we need to know?
We are the Prosaic People’s Federal Alliance. We stand for truth in government. We do not lie. We are easy to understand. We know how to solve problems. We do not delude ourselves with complexities. America is at war. America faces financial crisis. America faces employment crisis. These are not good things. War is not good. Neither is financial crisis or employment crisis. It is better when people work in peace. It is better when there is no financial crisis. In short, we must solve these problems. Complexity will not solve them. Simplicity will. People will follow simple instructions. But they cannot understand complex ones. That is why we give simple instructions.
If you believe in simplicity, vote for us. If you are not afraid to say what is obvious, vote for us. If you dislike complexity, vote for us. We are your party. We say what you want to hear. With us, you will not be confused. We do not talk about things you don’t understand. Rather, we talk about things you understand. We say that health is better than sickness. We say that peace is better than war. And we say that equality is better than inequality. Who can dispute these things? We do not argue. We simply say simple things, even if they are obvious.
There is another path—a simple path. Do not despair. Life need not be complex. We can live simple lives in peace. We must merely stay prosaic. We must merely say what we see. There is no need to over-think. There is no need to over-hypothesize. No, it is enough to say that grass is green, and that green is not red. If you are sick and tired of complexity, join us. Be satisfied with simplicity. It is all right. We do not need more. Because the ocean is wide, and so is the plain. Man is small. The world is large. It overwhelms us. It scares us. But we need not be scared. We must merely stick to what we see and what we know. We can do it. We just need to stay simple.
Put a party in power that is not afraid to say obvious truths. Truth is good because it is better than lying. Vote for truth, even if it is obvious. Vote for simplicity, because simplicity is better than complexity. Haven’t we had enough complexity? Let us live our lives in peace. Let us be prosaic. We are all Americans. We are one. We all have mothers and fathers. We all breathe. We have lungs. We need oxygen. We all speak English, or at least try to. What more do we need? Vote for simple truths today. The era of complexity is over. Do yourself a favor. Be simple. Be obvious. Be prosaic. It is easy. It is painless. It is good.
Painlessness is better than pain. And good is better than bad. The choice is obvious.
By : Prof. Martin F. Fillmore, Ph.D. (English Literature), Party Spokesman and Chief Rhetorician; Former Chief Executive Officer, B. R. Blandings Publishing Co., Inc., purveyors of simple literature for simple minds; Professor of Writing (Stanford University); Screenwriter; Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Literature (the novel “Waiting” (1997)).
We live. We die. We see. We have eyes. As humans, we experience. We were born. We have parents. That means we have mothers. We also have fathers. We have families. We are one. We are Americans. We live in a country. It is called America. Indians used to live here. Now we do.
We are the Prosaic People’s Federal Alliance for the Statement of Vaguely Profound, Pretentious-Sounding and Perfectly Obvious Truths. That means we tell the truth. Truth means we do not lie. We say things the way they are. Often, things are simple. We tell simple truths. Sometimes the truth is vaguely profound. Sometimes it is not. Whether profound or not, we tell the truth. The truth unites us. The truth is now.
Often people do not say things because they sound too obvious. But we are not afraid to do exactly that. We are not afraid to say that trees bloom in spring. We are not afraid to say that snow falls in winter. And we are not afraid to say that most people have two hands. In life, even obvious things must be said. We gain nothing through vagueness. We must communicate. What is obvious to one man may not be so to another.
We can solve problems if we communicate. There is no need to be vague. We are prosaic. We do not aim to confuse. We simply say what is obvious. The truth is obvious. As prosaic people, we declare obvious truths. We do not lie. We might not impress, but we do not lie, either. In politics, simplicity works. It is better to say obvious truths than subtle lies. We are not afraid.
Politics involve many people. We are the people. We stand united. We hold beliefs. We cherish ideas. We all have different ideas because we are all different people. We are different, yet the same. We are different because we all have different names. We are the same because we are all people. In this country, it is OK to be both different and the same. There is no need to fight. Fighting involves disagreement. Disagreement involves intolerance. But we do not disagree. We are not intolerant. We have strength in ourselves. We are not weak because the truth is strong. We are not weak because we tell the truth.
But we do not tell complex truths. We tell perfectly obvious truths. We say that the country is broke because it is. Our country is broke because it owes more money than it has. Broke means you have no money. If you owe more than you have, you have no money. That means you are broke. We are not afraid to say it. It is true. We do not shrink from truth. Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it does not. We say it no matter what. We may be prosaic, but we say what is true. We do not misrepresent or deceive. We say what we see. We see that the country is broke. That’s why we say it’s broke. That makes us different from other political parties. We value truth. They don’t.
White people live in America. So do black people and Asian people. White people have white skin and various hair colors. Black people have black skin and black hair. Asians have parents from Asia and black hair. But we are all people. We are all Americans. We all live in a country called America. No one can argue that. We do not shy away from saying it. Some call us stupid. But are we lying? Who can say that people who live in America are not Americans? And who can say that a person with white skin is not white? We are not afraid to say what is obvious. We do not need complexity.
We can solve problems if we keep them simple. Complex means there is too much information at one time. Complex means the information is hard to understand. Simple means there is not much information at one time. It also means that it is not hard to understand. We trust the people. People do not want complexity. They want simplicity. Life is complex enough. They don’t want more complexity. We are prosaic. That means we tell simple, obvious truths. Simple, obvious truths make people feel good because they are easy to understand. We want the people to feel good about their politicians. We do not want deception. We do not want bitterness. We just want simple, obvious truths. The sun is hot. Ice is cold. The sky is blue. What more do we need to know?
We are the Prosaic People’s Federal Alliance. We stand for truth in government. We do not lie. We are easy to understand. We know how to solve problems. We do not delude ourselves with complexities. America is at war. America faces financial crisis. America faces employment crisis. These are not good things. War is not good. Neither is financial crisis or employment crisis. It is better when people work in peace. It is better when there is no financial crisis. In short, we must solve these problems. Complexity will not solve them. Simplicity will. People will follow simple instructions. But they cannot understand complex ones. That is why we give simple instructions.
If you believe in simplicity, vote for us. If you are not afraid to say what is obvious, vote for us. If you dislike complexity, vote for us. We are your party. We say what you want to hear. With us, you will not be confused. We do not talk about things you don’t understand. Rather, we talk about things you understand. We say that health is better than sickness. We say that peace is better than war. And we say that equality is better than inequality. Who can dispute these things? We do not argue. We simply say simple things, even if they are obvious.
There is another path—a simple path. Do not despair. Life need not be complex. We can live simple lives in peace. We must merely stay prosaic. We must merely say what we see. There is no need to over-think. There is no need to over-hypothesize. No, it is enough to say that grass is green, and that green is not red. If you are sick and tired of complexity, join us. Be satisfied with simplicity. It is all right. We do not need more. Because the ocean is wide, and so is the plain. Man is small. The world is large. It overwhelms us. It scares us. But we need not be scared. We must merely stick to what we see and what we know. We can do it. We just need to stay simple.
Put a party in power that is not afraid to say obvious truths. Truth is good because it is better than lying. Vote for truth, even if it is obvious. Vote for simplicity, because simplicity is better than complexity. Haven’t we had enough complexity? Let us live our lives in peace. Let us be prosaic. We are all Americans. We are one. We all have mothers and fathers. We all breathe. We have lungs. We need oxygen. We all speak English, or at least try to. What more do we need? Vote for simple truths today. The era of complexity is over. Do yourself a favor. Be simple. Be obvious. Be prosaic. It is easy. It is painless. It is good.
Painlessness is better than pain. And good is better than bad. The choice is obvious.
Monday, June 15, 2009
BUY GLASSES THAT WILL NEVER BREAK!
A PAID ADVERTISEMENT
Do you wear eyeglasses? If you do, you know how difficult it can be to keep them in good shape. We know what you go through. How often do you break them, scratch them or sit on them? It seems no matter how much you try to protect them, you wind up losing them or dropping them on the floor. This is no laughing matter—glasses are expensive. It hurts to break or lose them. Plus you can’t see clearly in the meantime as you struggle to find replacements.
But you can defend yourself with GlassShield® glasses! At GlassShield®, we not only employ a full-service staff of professional optometrists* to find your prescription strength, but we also maintain our own production facility* to match your prescription to one of our beautiful, custom-made* frames. That’s right. You didn’t imagine it; you heard it right here. We both find your prescription AND manufacture the frames—all under one roof*. With GlassShield®, you can “one-stop-shop” for your glasses. No waiting or additional consultations here*. We value your time. We care about your glasses.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! We understand that your glasses are an investment. That’s why we offer our patented NoBreak™ insurance coverage for FREE* on every frame we sell at our stores. When you buy GlassShield® glasses with NoBreak™ coverage, you can sleep soundly at night, because no matter what happens to your glasses, we will replace or repair them—ABSOLUTELY FREE!* No, you are not dreaming. You heard it: ABSOLUTELY FREE!* If you sit on your glasses, no problem; we’ll fix them. If your son flushes them down the toilet, no problem; we’ll replace them. It’s time to take some stress out of your life. We can’t solve all your problems. But with NoBreak™ coverage, at least you’ll take away your worries when it comes to your glasses.
Come down to any one of our hundreds of U.S. locations for a consultation TODAY. Or call our TOLL-FREE number to place an order NOW at 1-800-420-SEEE. That’s 1-800-420-SEEE. Start living again. Stop worrying about your glasses. Buy them once and start reading the newspaper again. Stop worrying about scratching them on the kitchen counter. You won’t have to pay for repairs EVER AGAIN!* So what are you waiting for? CALL NOW! Our knowledgeable, professionally-trained staff* is standing by.
* See below:
MANDATORY DISCLOSURE UNDER STATE LAW: Offer not valid in all States. See individual store for details. GlassShield® contracts with optometrists at individual store locations and does not vouch for their professional qualifications or skill. GlassShield® expressly disclaims any liability for malpractice or tortious conduct committed by any optometrist with whom it maintains a contractual relationship. GlassShield® rents space in which it employs glass frame manufacturing craftsmen on an individual basis. It does not own a factory or centralized manufacturing facility. GlassShield® does not manufacture frames to individual taste. It offers prefabricated frames on a selective basis pursuant to State and local retail regulations. GlassShield ® does not perform optometry services in the same facility as it manufactures frames. The words “all under one roof” are mere sales puffery and are not intended to reflect actual facts. Rather, GlassShield® employs contractors and rents space at several locations throughout the Nation in order to perform the services indicated in the above advertisement. Customers may wait or require additional consultations depending on demand, office circumstances, supply, and other factors. This advertisement creates no right, entitlement or privilege concerning wait time or service quality. GlassShield® reserves the right to alter service quality at will without notice. NoBreak™ insurance coverage is underwritten by the Fourth State Bank of Oklahoma, N.A., and is not free. Rather, the cost of the program is factored into the price of all GlassShield® optometry and frame sales and services. NoBreak™ insurance coverage excludes all accidental damage, loss, scratching or breakage. NoBreak™ insurance coverage excludes all intentional damage, loss, scratching or breakage. NoBreak™ insurance coverage excludes all damage, loss, scratching or breakage whatsoever, of any kind or nature, absolutely and for all time, any law or court order notwithstanding. Replacement and repair costs are borne exclusively by customer. GlassShield®’s call center sales staff are “professional” to the extent that such sales staff: (1) Speak English as a second language; (2) Can use a telephone with call waiting and hold technology; and (3) Received at least a 50% score on a 20-question quiz following a 1-hour GlassShield® informational seminar. GlassShield®’s call center sales staff are not employees of GlassShield® and in no way have authority to bargain for, bind or otherwise obligate GlassShield® to any contractual liability whatsoever.
SUPPLEMENTAL DISCLOSURE UNDER STATE LAW: By entering into a sales relationship with GlassShield®, all customers waive their right to a jury trial in case of any dispute concerning GlassShield®’s products or services. In case of any such dispute, GlassShield® shall appoint an arbitrator to resolve the issue from its Tulsa, Oklahoma sales office; and such arbitration shall take place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. All costs associated therewith shall be borne exclusively by the Customer. Any decision in favor of the Customer shall be appealable to GlassShield®’s Board of Directors. Any decision in favor of GlassShield® shall be final, binding and unappealable. By entering into a sales relationship with GlassShield®, Customer waives any right to claim that any GlassShield® contract is, was or shall be unconscionable or unenforceable. By entering into a sales relationship with GlassShield®, Customer has no procedural or substantive rights whatsoever, except the right to own, possess and take title to any goods purchased in-hand paid, liability wherefor (including liability for gross negligence, malice or defectiveness leading to catastrophic personal injury or death) is hereby expressly disclaimed.
Do you wear eyeglasses? If you do, you know how difficult it can be to keep them in good shape. We know what you go through. How often do you break them, scratch them or sit on them? It seems no matter how much you try to protect them, you wind up losing them or dropping them on the floor. This is no laughing matter—glasses are expensive. It hurts to break or lose them. Plus you can’t see clearly in the meantime as you struggle to find replacements.
But you can defend yourself with GlassShield® glasses! At GlassShield®, we not only employ a full-service staff of professional optometrists* to find your prescription strength, but we also maintain our own production facility* to match your prescription to one of our beautiful, custom-made* frames. That’s right. You didn’t imagine it; you heard it right here. We both find your prescription AND manufacture the frames—all under one roof*. With GlassShield®, you can “one-stop-shop” for your glasses. No waiting or additional consultations here*. We value your time. We care about your glasses.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! We understand that your glasses are an investment. That’s why we offer our patented NoBreak™ insurance coverage for FREE* on every frame we sell at our stores. When you buy GlassShield® glasses with NoBreak™ coverage, you can sleep soundly at night, because no matter what happens to your glasses, we will replace or repair them—ABSOLUTELY FREE!* No, you are not dreaming. You heard it: ABSOLUTELY FREE!* If you sit on your glasses, no problem; we’ll fix them. If your son flushes them down the toilet, no problem; we’ll replace them. It’s time to take some stress out of your life. We can’t solve all your problems. But with NoBreak™ coverage, at least you’ll take away your worries when it comes to your glasses.
Come down to any one of our hundreds of U.S. locations for a consultation TODAY. Or call our TOLL-FREE number to place an order NOW at 1-800-420-SEEE. That’s 1-800-420-SEEE. Start living again. Stop worrying about your glasses. Buy them once and start reading the newspaper again. Stop worrying about scratching them on the kitchen counter. You won’t have to pay for repairs EVER AGAIN!* So what are you waiting for? CALL NOW! Our knowledgeable, professionally-trained staff* is standing by.
* See below:
MANDATORY DISCLOSURE UNDER STATE LAW: Offer not valid in all States. See individual store for details. GlassShield® contracts with optometrists at individual store locations and does not vouch for their professional qualifications or skill. GlassShield® expressly disclaims any liability for malpractice or tortious conduct committed by any optometrist with whom it maintains a contractual relationship. GlassShield® rents space in which it employs glass frame manufacturing craftsmen on an individual basis. It does not own a factory or centralized manufacturing facility. GlassShield® does not manufacture frames to individual taste. It offers prefabricated frames on a selective basis pursuant to State and local retail regulations. GlassShield ® does not perform optometry services in the same facility as it manufactures frames. The words “all under one roof” are mere sales puffery and are not intended to reflect actual facts. Rather, GlassShield® employs contractors and rents space at several locations throughout the Nation in order to perform the services indicated in the above advertisement. Customers may wait or require additional consultations depending on demand, office circumstances, supply, and other factors. This advertisement creates no right, entitlement or privilege concerning wait time or service quality. GlassShield® reserves the right to alter service quality at will without notice. NoBreak™ insurance coverage is underwritten by the Fourth State Bank of Oklahoma, N.A., and is not free. Rather, the cost of the program is factored into the price of all GlassShield® optometry and frame sales and services. NoBreak™ insurance coverage excludes all accidental damage, loss, scratching or breakage. NoBreak™ insurance coverage excludes all intentional damage, loss, scratching or breakage. NoBreak™ insurance coverage excludes all damage, loss, scratching or breakage whatsoever, of any kind or nature, absolutely and for all time, any law or court order notwithstanding. Replacement and repair costs are borne exclusively by customer. GlassShield®’s call center sales staff are “professional” to the extent that such sales staff: (1) Speak English as a second language; (2) Can use a telephone with call waiting and hold technology; and (3) Received at least a 50% score on a 20-question quiz following a 1-hour GlassShield® informational seminar. GlassShield®’s call center sales staff are not employees of GlassShield® and in no way have authority to bargain for, bind or otherwise obligate GlassShield® to any contractual liability whatsoever.
SUPPLEMENTAL DISCLOSURE UNDER STATE LAW: By entering into a sales relationship with GlassShield®, all customers waive their right to a jury trial in case of any dispute concerning GlassShield®’s products or services. In case of any such dispute, GlassShield® shall appoint an arbitrator to resolve the issue from its Tulsa, Oklahoma sales office; and such arbitration shall take place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. All costs associated therewith shall be borne exclusively by the Customer. Any decision in favor of the Customer shall be appealable to GlassShield®’s Board of Directors. Any decision in favor of GlassShield® shall be final, binding and unappealable. By entering into a sales relationship with GlassShield®, Customer waives any right to claim that any GlassShield® contract is, was or shall be unconscionable or unenforceable. By entering into a sales relationship with GlassShield®, Customer has no procedural or substantive rights whatsoever, except the right to own, possess and take title to any goods purchased in-hand paid, liability wherefor (including liability for gross negligence, malice or defectiveness leading to catastrophic personal injury or death) is hereby expressly disclaimed.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
DON'T BUY OUR PRODUCT - IT IS THE WORST ONE ON THE MARKET
A PAID ADVERTISEMENT
Is your lawnmower blade doing its job? Are weeds overwhelming your front porch and ruining your garden? Are you sick and tired of cleaning out the lawnmower because it just isn’t cutting anymore? Isn’t it time to enjoy your lawn again?
Well you WON’T solve your problems if you buy Turbo-Cut® lawnmower blades! That’s right, our products will NOT solve your problems. Our non-patented, completely ineffective Dull-Blade® technology is guaranteed NOT to cut grass better than our competitors. In fact, it will cut grass WORSE than all our major competitors. And it will actually damage your lawn, too!
We don’t like our product and we don’t think you should buy it. You would be better off buying someone else’s lawnmower blades, not ours. Turbo-Cut® has been the subject of 1,592 product liability lawsuits since arriving on the market in 2002. It is guaranteed non-safe! You heard it: GUARANTEED NON-SAFE! It has a nasty tendency to fly off while your lawnmower is in operation due to an engineering flaw. Over 54 children have been injured or killed thanks to our product! DON’T BUY NOW! Operators are standing by to take your order. But again—we don’t recommend that you buy our product.
Turbo-Cut® is a terrible product. But don’t take our word for it. Let’s hear from some unsatisfied Turbo-Cut® customers:
“They charged me $459.99 for this piece of shit. It took me 12 hours to install the damn things, then I called their call center and they kept me on hold for 4 more hours. When I finally reached someone, I couldn’t understand a word he said because he had a Pakistani accent. Finally he told me that I probably forgot to turn on the lawnmower. I told him the lawnmower was fine; I was just trying to attach a blade to it. He said my attitude wasn’t helping anything. Finally I just gave up and returned the fucking thing. Then they wouldn’t give me a refund because I didn’t have a sales receipt. You’d have to be a goddamned idiot to buy Turbo-Cut®.”
-Bill, Maine.
“Well, I got it all hooked up and took my mower out for a ride. My grass was pretty long when I started. After mowing a bit, I looked back and noticed the grass was just as high as it was before I started. I thought: ‘Golly, I hope I put it on right.’ So I stopped the machine, got off and rearranged the blades. I gave it another go. As soon as I started up again, I heard a loud bang, then felt a terrible pain in my groin. I collapsed to the ground. Luckily my wife was there and she called 911. Apparently the blade broke free from the cowling and flew straight into my testicles. Now I only have one nut thanks to fucking Turbo-Cut®. They’re fighting me on compensation now, saying I should have read the instructions. I have never dealt with such a horrible company. I hope they all die. I’m stuck with one nut and they’re talking about an instruction manual that’s written in Chinese. Assholes. Turbo-Cut® might not cut your grass. But it sure as hell might cut off your balls."
Is your lawnmower blade doing its job? Are weeds overwhelming your front porch and ruining your garden? Are you sick and tired of cleaning out the lawnmower because it just isn’t cutting anymore? Isn’t it time to enjoy your lawn again?
Well you WON’T solve your problems if you buy Turbo-Cut® lawnmower blades! That’s right, our products will NOT solve your problems. Our non-patented, completely ineffective Dull-Blade® technology is guaranteed NOT to cut grass better than our competitors. In fact, it will cut grass WORSE than all our major competitors. And it will actually damage your lawn, too!
We don’t like our product and we don’t think you should buy it. You would be better off buying someone else’s lawnmower blades, not ours. Turbo-Cut® has been the subject of 1,592 product liability lawsuits since arriving on the market in 2002. It is guaranteed non-safe! You heard it: GUARANTEED NON-SAFE! It has a nasty tendency to fly off while your lawnmower is in operation due to an engineering flaw. Over 54 children have been injured or killed thanks to our product! DON’T BUY NOW! Operators are standing by to take your order. But again—we don’t recommend that you buy our product.
Turbo-Cut® is a terrible product. But don’t take our word for it. Let’s hear from some unsatisfied Turbo-Cut® customers:
“They charged me $459.99 for this piece of shit. It took me 12 hours to install the damn things, then I called their call center and they kept me on hold for 4 more hours. When I finally reached someone, I couldn’t understand a word he said because he had a Pakistani accent. Finally he told me that I probably forgot to turn on the lawnmower. I told him the lawnmower was fine; I was just trying to attach a blade to it. He said my attitude wasn’t helping anything. Finally I just gave up and returned the fucking thing. Then they wouldn’t give me a refund because I didn’t have a sales receipt. You’d have to be a goddamned idiot to buy Turbo-Cut®.”
-Bill, Maine.
“Well, I got it all hooked up and took my mower out for a ride. My grass was pretty long when I started. After mowing a bit, I looked back and noticed the grass was just as high as it was before I started. I thought: ‘Golly, I hope I put it on right.’ So I stopped the machine, got off and rearranged the blades. I gave it another go. As soon as I started up again, I heard a loud bang, then felt a terrible pain in my groin. I collapsed to the ground. Luckily my wife was there and she called 911. Apparently the blade broke free from the cowling and flew straight into my testicles. Now I only have one nut thanks to fucking Turbo-Cut®. They’re fighting me on compensation now, saying I should have read the instructions. I have never dealt with such a horrible company. I hope they all die. I’m stuck with one nut and they’re talking about an instruction manual that’s written in Chinese. Assholes. Turbo-Cut® might not cut your grass. But it sure as hell might cut off your balls."
-Ed, Pennsylvania.
“I bought a Turbo-Cut® 5-pack for my husband’s birthday last September. I decided I would hide them in the garage under some woodchips, then wrap them once the day got closer. Three weeks later, I went out to get the blades and discovered they were completely rusted through. I went to the store for a refund. I even had my sales receipt. They gave me a hard time. Finally, they put me on the phone with Turbo-Cut®’s customer service and returns department. I told them what happened and they said their products only have a limited 10-day warranty. I said that was bullshit. They said it was on the package. It was. So I wasted $219.99 and wound up with some rusted-ass worthless lawnmower blades. Screw you guys. Dealing with your company has been the worst experience in my life.”
-Mary Ann, Florida.
As you can see, our products are absolute garbage. They are also overpriced. A single blade costs $49.99. But we don’t sell single blades; you need to buy at least 5 at a time, so you’re looking at $249.95 to start. We also conceal our prices from customers. We try not to say how expensive they are because no one would buy them otherwise. Take it from us: We sell overpriced, unreliable, dangerous and flat-out bad products. Do yourself and your lawn a favor: DON’T CALL NOW!
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! If you call our non-toll-free number NOW, you will NOT receive a free gift. You will NOT receive a memento keyring, a beer cup holder or a glass unicorn. You also will NOT receive a gift certificate, store credit voucher or discount off your next purchase. If you call NOW, you will receive nothing but the product you order, and our inexperienced sales staff will probably get your order wrong, too. That’s right. You heard it. NO FREE GIFT! With us, you get NO FREE GIFT. And with us there's NO FREE SHIPPING! So why bother calling? You really should not waste your time with us. There are so many better companies out there. For your own sake, DON’T GIVE US YOUR BUSINESS.
Running low on cash? Think you want to buy Turbo-Cut® but you’re not sure whether you can afford it this month? NO PROBLEM! But we don’t offer competitive financing options. If you get a loan through our financing department, it’s due in full within 30 days, plus interest, fees, costs and penalties. It’s a very unfair deal for you. You really shouldn’t buy our product if you need financing. You will get screwed badly in the end. Our competitors offer much better financing deals. You really should try calling them instead. We would love to win your business. But frankly we really don’t deserve it because our products are bad and we will overcharge you if you need a loan to buy them. Be smart. Avoid us at all costs.
Take a look at your lawn. You need lawnmower blades that work, not our shitty products. They won’t cut your grass. They won’t work. In fact, they will probably injure you or your children. They will also cost you a fortune. They will also cause you terrible frustration and long waits on the phone with our unprofessional customer service representatives. Be fair to yourself and to us. DON’T CALL OUR NON-TOLL-FREE NUMBER—EVER.
We sell the worst product on the market. It’s unsafe. It’s expensive. It’s unreliable. We don’t stand behind it. We don’t give refunds. We don’t offer free gifts. We don’t offer fair finance plans. You really should look elsewhere. If you CALL NOW, you will face frustration, trouble and even physical injury. YOU DON’T WANT THAT, DO YOU? Then stop listening to this advertisement. If you CALL NOW, you are just going to hurt yourself and your family.
When you think bad products, just remember the name: Turbo-Cut®. When you think about lawnmower blades, just remember our motto: America’s Worst Lawnmower Blades at the Worst Prices. Guaranteed. Don’t be a fool. Don’t call. Our untrained call center wage-earners are standing by. Well, actually they probably aren’t. They are probably having a call center pizza party and talking about nails and hair. But if you do reach them, get ready for a long wait on hold.
When you need to mow your lawn RIGHT, don’t think Turbo-Cut®. Calling us will be the worst decision you ever make. Guaranteed (subject to limitations contained in applicable owner's manual. See store for details).
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"A FAMILY OWNED BUSINESS" IS STILL A BUSINESS; AND IT'S NOT YOUR FAMILY
OESTERHOUDT STRIKES
Corporations are private profit machines. In prior essays, I noted that corporations are “legal entities” that pool money and labor for a single reason: To generate returns for shareholders. They concentrate management authority in a “Board of Directors” that makes “prudent decisions” solely to benefit the shareholders. Directors must observe a “duty of loyalty” to the corporation, meaning all their actions must serve the entity. Directors, then—as well as corporate employees and officers—are simply glorified servants. Like vassals in medieval times, they are “duty-bound” to support their corporate lords. They must not think about themselves. Their time belongs to the corporation and the shareholders who own it. The corporation pays them “compensation” for their pains; but they do not share in the overall profit unless they own stock. In short, true “business corporations” channel individual self-interest and multiply it a thousandfold. There is no room for altruism, compassion or charity. In fact, corporate leaders who spend money on others can be legally sanctioned. See, e.g., Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich. 459 (1919).
Corporations act largely in silence. Not many people know how they actually work. In fact, most people look upon them with some respect. After all, they look official. They own properties all over the country. Their employees wear uniforms. They have recognizable logos. Everyone can identify corporate goods, like Mercedes cars and Whopper® sandwiches. In short, major corporations play a visible role in people’s lives. They wield almost as much influence as the State. But this is the central error: Corporations have nothing to do with the government. While the State accords them special legal status, they are still private entities. They exist to sustain private enterprise. They owe no duties to anyone except their own shareholders; and their shareholders want profits. In that sense, corporations have a duty to act selfishly. There is nothing noble or glorious about their motives.
Yet corporations must cultivate a good image to win customers. If people did not to some extent “trust” a corporation, they would not buy from it. And no corporation can make a profit without customers. In that light, corporations cannot blatantly reveal that they just want to make profits. They need to advertise in such a way as to suggest that they “care” about their customers. They need to appear that they care, even though they only have one legal duty: To enrich the shareholders. This is no easy feat. After all, people do not like unabashed selfishness. So how do corporations mask their true intentions while convincing customers that they are “trustworthy” and “caring?”
I will not discuss every possible corporate ploy intended to fool customers into thinking that “corporations care.” That would take much too long. Rather, I want to discuss a specific corporate practice, namely: Advertising the company’s “family roots.” Many corporations do this. On trucks, billboards and even television commercials, they proudly claim: “We are Blah-Blah-Blah Corporation, a Family-Owned Business,” or “XYZ Inc. Family-Owned Since 1980.”
In effect, these companies want to associate themselves with the concept “family.” Why? In my view, it is quite insidious. After all, we all have a tender place in our hearts for own families. Even if we hate our siblings and our parents, we nonetheless grew up with them. We never completely forget them. On a very profound psychological level, we depend on our families for our identities, our names and even meaning in life. No matter how much we think Mom screwed us up, we still love Mom on some level. And when we think “family,” we think intimacy, familiarity, comfort, love, mutual caring, compassion, trust and “home.” This is not to say that all families nurture these positive things. Indeed, family life often brings great unhappiness and discord. But the fact remains that the word carries a generally positive connotation. No matter how bad our own family relationships may be, our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters know us and somehow understand us. We are “linked by blood.” We are not “just strangers.”
Companies exploit these associations when they paint themselves as “family businesses.” They attempt to forge a link between their private, undifferentiated profit-seeking and the positive, “caring” complex inherent in “the family concept.” They attempt to lull customers into thinking that they will not be “just another customer;” rather, they will be like a “family member” who deserves trust, respect, love and caring. These companies want to distinguish themselves from “regular corporations” that do not involve “families.” Those corporations are “cruel, cold and uncaring” because they are not “family-like;” they are just “companies” that “don’t care.” By contrast, a “family business” wants you to think that they care about you. It wants to believe that you are “special” because “families care,” while “regular businesses” do not.
But this is all a naked fraud. It does not matter who owns a corporation; it is still a corporation. Corporations exist to enrich private shareholders, whether those shareholders are total strangers or whether they are blood relatives. Put another way, it is irrelevant whether a “family” owns the company because it is not your family. Only your family cares about you and your needs. The family that owns the corporation will look to its own members, not you. It merely wants you to think that it cares about you by tying its name to the concept “family.” Advertisers know how to exploit average people’s mental processes. They know that the word “family” carries unusually hypnotic power. It is no accident that modern psychiatry dwells largely on “family development” and “family trauma” to identify psychological problems. Our family lives play a significant role in forming our personalities and character. Families nurture—and corrupt—our instincts for love, caring and emotion. Companies know that “family rhetoric” packs a devastating subconscious punch. That is why they attempt to link their image to “the family.”
How crass is this? How shameless? What does petty commerce have to do with our unique family life? Can companies really stoop this low? Yes, they can. In fact, they have a legal duty to resort to any means—ethical or legal, unethical or illegal—that generate more profits than costs. If triggering a fallacious connection between “family caring” and “corporate service” generates more profit than it would without the connection, then a company will adopt it. It might be utterly groundless and tasteless, but good reason and taste mean nothing next to the bottom line. In fact, if shareholders learned that the company made less money without the “family business” tag than it did with the tag, it could hold the Directors liable for failing in their fiduciary duties to them. In the free market, companies compete for customers and profits. They need to be inventive in order to obtain an edge. In this competition, delicate tastes will not prevail. Rather, only the strong survive. And the strong are not afraid to resort to any means needed to win the competition, tasteless or not. If that means falsely insinuating that the business is “one, big caring family,” then the company will insinuate it.
This is not just hot air. Many extremely large companies claim that they are “family businesses,” not just mom-and-pop shops in small towns. Du Pont Corporation claims to be a “family business.” So does Disney. These are not “close-knit, caring organizations.” These are ruthless capitalist titans who would sooner run over their competition than show mercy or compassion. Such ruthlessness is not thematically consistent with the concept “family,” yet these moguls do their best to cultivate a “family image” in order to better pursue their fundamentally “un-family-like” private ambitions. In essence, it makes no more sense to trust a “family business” than it does to trust a “Fortune 500 Company.” They are all the same because they all seek the same thing: Private shareholder enrichment at any cost. Self-interest dictates a corporation’s actions, not family-like compassion or mercy. If a corporation is a “family business,” it does not treat its customers or its competitors any better than the cruelest industrialist would. In that sense, “family businesses” only act like “families” with their own shareholders. The family gets the profit and the riches, not the outside world. This is the central irony in the whole “family business” fraud: Corporations want you to think that you are “part of the family;” but in fact you are simply paying to keep their family wealthy. You are not “part of the family.” You are an outsider. Again, if it is not your family, you should not expect it to treat you like a family member.
It is difficult for me to write about corporations without mentioning cynicism. Cynicism provides an ideal analytical framework to understand corporate action. After all, cynicism assumes that self-interest motivates all human behavior. Cynicism immediately penetrates corporate activity because corporations institutionally enshrine self-interest. Shareholders pool their money in a corporation to advance their own self-interest for minimal personal risk. A corporation exists to enrich its shareholders, not others. This is institutional selfishness; it provides fertile ground for cynical analysis. In fact, it would be illegal for a corporation to act altruistically because altruism implies acting for another’s benefit, not your own. When corporations act for others, their shareholders sue them for deviating from the “self-interest principle.” Against this background, it is possible to deconstruct every corporate ploy and expose its selfish roots. In virtually every case, when a corporation tries to “appear caring,” cynicism instructs us to mercilessly doubt its motives. Put simply, corporations do not care about others. To that extent, when they adopt measures intended to “appear caring,” a cynical explanation will quickly reveal the true motive.
Applying cynicism, we can easily deconstruct the “family business” ploy. Now, if we assume that all corporations have a legal duty to enrich their shareholders, we can also assume that all their actions will advance that duty. Enriching shareholders requires business success. Business success, in turn, requires loyal and trusting customers who funnel money into the corporation. It is not easy to convince undifferentiated customers to fork over cash, especially when competitors offer the same goods or services. Thus, success requires some gimmick, some special “catch” that convinces customers to choose one business over another. Customers must have some mental connection to the corporation that distinguishes it from the competition. Claiming that a company is a “family business” amid ostensibly “cruel competitors” can forge the necessary “mental connection.” After all, “family” carries a positive, “caring” connotation. An average customer would respect that connotation when choosing between undifferentiated commercial competitors. That extra “zing” might increase the chances that a new customer would choose the “family business,” leading to increased sales, more money and more “shareholder enrichment.” In the end, it does not matter whether the company treats the new customer “like family.” All that matters is that the customer spent his money with the company, not the competition. That fulfills the core corporate mission. The shareholders win. They advance their self-interest by exploiting “family” appeal with average customers.
Does it matter whether the company treats the customer “like family?” Certainly not. From a cynical perspective, it does not matter whether a company means what it says. It does not matter that the method is dishonest or even facetious, because results matter more than methods. When analyzing corporate action, I have learned to expect dishonorable, unethical conduct. After all, corporate action is all about the profit. If an unethical method wins more profit than an ethical one, a corporation must adopt the unethical method in order to please its shareholders (provided, of course, that the unethical method does not generate costs down the road). There is no honor in corporate practice. When results matter, methods become irrelevant. There is no room for principle. Corporations want results, not the psychic satisfaction that flows from vindicating impractical abstractions such as “honesty.” As long as the company appears honest to the extent necessary to maintain customer trust—and keeps healthy profit levels—there is no need to actually be honest. This is dishonorable. But it is also practical. And in corporate life, practicality beats abstraction every time.
From a principled perspective, a private business corporation cannot in good conscience claim that it is a “family.” Private business corporations are not “caring institutions.” They do not show love. They do not raise children. They do not nurture tenderness or show mercy to relatives. Rather, they are legal entities dedicated solely to their shareholders’ private profit interests. To suggest, then, that a company will “treat others like family members” is hypocritical in the extreme. Commerce is war. It is a war for profits, customers, market share and success. Commerce is no place for warmhearted “family feelings.” If a company treated its customers and competitors “like family,” it would fail almost instantaneously. There is no room to be tender or merciful in commerce. A “good corporation” wins accounts and collects its money. By contrast, a “good family” forgives its wayward sons and let them off the hook with a kiss. Families forgive, forget and nurture. Corporations pursue, win and collect—by contract and suit if necessary. These are not consistent ideologies. In that light, it is both misleading and fraudulent to equate “corporate values” with “family values.”
We should expect both deception and fraud from corporations because deception and fraud reveal dishonor. Honor means adhering to principles, no matter the circumstances. Honor means suffering for ideas, even when abandoning those ideas might abrogate the suffering. Corporations, however, cannot be honorable. They must win profits. That means “going with the flow” and breaking principles when necessary. In short, corporations must be “flexible,” not “honorable.” It is honorable to “tell the truth” and “to be honest.” But if honesty and truth endanger results, a corporate leader can be neither honest nor truthful. He has a duty to enrich his shareholders by any cost-effective means necessary. That is why he resorts to misleading characterizations, such as calling his for-profit entity “A Family Business.” If corporate leaders were honorable, they would refuse to equate their quest for private profit with tender family emotions. Yet they do not refuse. They serve their shareholders because they have a duty to make them rich. If calling the business “family-like” wins profits, they have no choice but to be dishonorable.
In the world of corporate morality, deception and fraud are not ethical transgressions. They are “calculated measures intended to win maximum profit for minimal risk.” A good corporation knows how to be unethical without ever arousing suspicion. Conscience and honor play no role in this analysis. It is unfortunate. But it is a jungle out there; and commerce is commerce.
Corporations are private profit machines. In prior essays, I noted that corporations are “legal entities” that pool money and labor for a single reason: To generate returns for shareholders. They concentrate management authority in a “Board of Directors” that makes “prudent decisions” solely to benefit the shareholders. Directors must observe a “duty of loyalty” to the corporation, meaning all their actions must serve the entity. Directors, then—as well as corporate employees and officers—are simply glorified servants. Like vassals in medieval times, they are “duty-bound” to support their corporate lords. They must not think about themselves. Their time belongs to the corporation and the shareholders who own it. The corporation pays them “compensation” for their pains; but they do not share in the overall profit unless they own stock. In short, true “business corporations” channel individual self-interest and multiply it a thousandfold. There is no room for altruism, compassion or charity. In fact, corporate leaders who spend money on others can be legally sanctioned. See, e.g., Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich. 459 (1919).
Corporations act largely in silence. Not many people know how they actually work. In fact, most people look upon them with some respect. After all, they look official. They own properties all over the country. Their employees wear uniforms. They have recognizable logos. Everyone can identify corporate goods, like Mercedes cars and Whopper® sandwiches. In short, major corporations play a visible role in people’s lives. They wield almost as much influence as the State. But this is the central error: Corporations have nothing to do with the government. While the State accords them special legal status, they are still private entities. They exist to sustain private enterprise. They owe no duties to anyone except their own shareholders; and their shareholders want profits. In that sense, corporations have a duty to act selfishly. There is nothing noble or glorious about their motives.
Yet corporations must cultivate a good image to win customers. If people did not to some extent “trust” a corporation, they would not buy from it. And no corporation can make a profit without customers. In that light, corporations cannot blatantly reveal that they just want to make profits. They need to advertise in such a way as to suggest that they “care” about their customers. They need to appear that they care, even though they only have one legal duty: To enrich the shareholders. This is no easy feat. After all, people do not like unabashed selfishness. So how do corporations mask their true intentions while convincing customers that they are “trustworthy” and “caring?”
I will not discuss every possible corporate ploy intended to fool customers into thinking that “corporations care.” That would take much too long. Rather, I want to discuss a specific corporate practice, namely: Advertising the company’s “family roots.” Many corporations do this. On trucks, billboards and even television commercials, they proudly claim: “We are Blah-Blah-Blah Corporation, a Family-Owned Business,” or “XYZ Inc. Family-Owned Since 1980.”
In effect, these companies want to associate themselves with the concept “family.” Why? In my view, it is quite insidious. After all, we all have a tender place in our hearts for own families. Even if we hate our siblings and our parents, we nonetheless grew up with them. We never completely forget them. On a very profound psychological level, we depend on our families for our identities, our names and even meaning in life. No matter how much we think Mom screwed us up, we still love Mom on some level. And when we think “family,” we think intimacy, familiarity, comfort, love, mutual caring, compassion, trust and “home.” This is not to say that all families nurture these positive things. Indeed, family life often brings great unhappiness and discord. But the fact remains that the word carries a generally positive connotation. No matter how bad our own family relationships may be, our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters know us and somehow understand us. We are “linked by blood.” We are not “just strangers.”
Companies exploit these associations when they paint themselves as “family businesses.” They attempt to forge a link between their private, undifferentiated profit-seeking and the positive, “caring” complex inherent in “the family concept.” They attempt to lull customers into thinking that they will not be “just another customer;” rather, they will be like a “family member” who deserves trust, respect, love and caring. These companies want to distinguish themselves from “regular corporations” that do not involve “families.” Those corporations are “cruel, cold and uncaring” because they are not “family-like;” they are just “companies” that “don’t care.” By contrast, a “family business” wants you to think that they care about you. It wants to believe that you are “special” because “families care,” while “regular businesses” do not.
But this is all a naked fraud. It does not matter who owns a corporation; it is still a corporation. Corporations exist to enrich private shareholders, whether those shareholders are total strangers or whether they are blood relatives. Put another way, it is irrelevant whether a “family” owns the company because it is not your family. Only your family cares about you and your needs. The family that owns the corporation will look to its own members, not you. It merely wants you to think that it cares about you by tying its name to the concept “family.” Advertisers know how to exploit average people’s mental processes. They know that the word “family” carries unusually hypnotic power. It is no accident that modern psychiatry dwells largely on “family development” and “family trauma” to identify psychological problems. Our family lives play a significant role in forming our personalities and character. Families nurture—and corrupt—our instincts for love, caring and emotion. Companies know that “family rhetoric” packs a devastating subconscious punch. That is why they attempt to link their image to “the family.”
How crass is this? How shameless? What does petty commerce have to do with our unique family life? Can companies really stoop this low? Yes, they can. In fact, they have a legal duty to resort to any means—ethical or legal, unethical or illegal—that generate more profits than costs. If triggering a fallacious connection between “family caring” and “corporate service” generates more profit than it would without the connection, then a company will adopt it. It might be utterly groundless and tasteless, but good reason and taste mean nothing next to the bottom line. In fact, if shareholders learned that the company made less money without the “family business” tag than it did with the tag, it could hold the Directors liable for failing in their fiduciary duties to them. In the free market, companies compete for customers and profits. They need to be inventive in order to obtain an edge. In this competition, delicate tastes will not prevail. Rather, only the strong survive. And the strong are not afraid to resort to any means needed to win the competition, tasteless or not. If that means falsely insinuating that the business is “one, big caring family,” then the company will insinuate it.
This is not just hot air. Many extremely large companies claim that they are “family businesses,” not just mom-and-pop shops in small towns. Du Pont Corporation claims to be a “family business.” So does Disney. These are not “close-knit, caring organizations.” These are ruthless capitalist titans who would sooner run over their competition than show mercy or compassion. Such ruthlessness is not thematically consistent with the concept “family,” yet these moguls do their best to cultivate a “family image” in order to better pursue their fundamentally “un-family-like” private ambitions. In essence, it makes no more sense to trust a “family business” than it does to trust a “Fortune 500 Company.” They are all the same because they all seek the same thing: Private shareholder enrichment at any cost. Self-interest dictates a corporation’s actions, not family-like compassion or mercy. If a corporation is a “family business,” it does not treat its customers or its competitors any better than the cruelest industrialist would. In that sense, “family businesses” only act like “families” with their own shareholders. The family gets the profit and the riches, not the outside world. This is the central irony in the whole “family business” fraud: Corporations want you to think that you are “part of the family;” but in fact you are simply paying to keep their family wealthy. You are not “part of the family.” You are an outsider. Again, if it is not your family, you should not expect it to treat you like a family member.
It is difficult for me to write about corporations without mentioning cynicism. Cynicism provides an ideal analytical framework to understand corporate action. After all, cynicism assumes that self-interest motivates all human behavior. Cynicism immediately penetrates corporate activity because corporations institutionally enshrine self-interest. Shareholders pool their money in a corporation to advance their own self-interest for minimal personal risk. A corporation exists to enrich its shareholders, not others. This is institutional selfishness; it provides fertile ground for cynical analysis. In fact, it would be illegal for a corporation to act altruistically because altruism implies acting for another’s benefit, not your own. When corporations act for others, their shareholders sue them for deviating from the “self-interest principle.” Against this background, it is possible to deconstruct every corporate ploy and expose its selfish roots. In virtually every case, when a corporation tries to “appear caring,” cynicism instructs us to mercilessly doubt its motives. Put simply, corporations do not care about others. To that extent, when they adopt measures intended to “appear caring,” a cynical explanation will quickly reveal the true motive.
Applying cynicism, we can easily deconstruct the “family business” ploy. Now, if we assume that all corporations have a legal duty to enrich their shareholders, we can also assume that all their actions will advance that duty. Enriching shareholders requires business success. Business success, in turn, requires loyal and trusting customers who funnel money into the corporation. It is not easy to convince undifferentiated customers to fork over cash, especially when competitors offer the same goods or services. Thus, success requires some gimmick, some special “catch” that convinces customers to choose one business over another. Customers must have some mental connection to the corporation that distinguishes it from the competition. Claiming that a company is a “family business” amid ostensibly “cruel competitors” can forge the necessary “mental connection.” After all, “family” carries a positive, “caring” connotation. An average customer would respect that connotation when choosing between undifferentiated commercial competitors. That extra “zing” might increase the chances that a new customer would choose the “family business,” leading to increased sales, more money and more “shareholder enrichment.” In the end, it does not matter whether the company treats the new customer “like family.” All that matters is that the customer spent his money with the company, not the competition. That fulfills the core corporate mission. The shareholders win. They advance their self-interest by exploiting “family” appeal with average customers.
Does it matter whether the company treats the customer “like family?” Certainly not. From a cynical perspective, it does not matter whether a company means what it says. It does not matter that the method is dishonest or even facetious, because results matter more than methods. When analyzing corporate action, I have learned to expect dishonorable, unethical conduct. After all, corporate action is all about the profit. If an unethical method wins more profit than an ethical one, a corporation must adopt the unethical method in order to please its shareholders (provided, of course, that the unethical method does not generate costs down the road). There is no honor in corporate practice. When results matter, methods become irrelevant. There is no room for principle. Corporations want results, not the psychic satisfaction that flows from vindicating impractical abstractions such as “honesty.” As long as the company appears honest to the extent necessary to maintain customer trust—and keeps healthy profit levels—there is no need to actually be honest. This is dishonorable. But it is also practical. And in corporate life, practicality beats abstraction every time.
From a principled perspective, a private business corporation cannot in good conscience claim that it is a “family.” Private business corporations are not “caring institutions.” They do not show love. They do not raise children. They do not nurture tenderness or show mercy to relatives. Rather, they are legal entities dedicated solely to their shareholders’ private profit interests. To suggest, then, that a company will “treat others like family members” is hypocritical in the extreme. Commerce is war. It is a war for profits, customers, market share and success. Commerce is no place for warmhearted “family feelings.” If a company treated its customers and competitors “like family,” it would fail almost instantaneously. There is no room to be tender or merciful in commerce. A “good corporation” wins accounts and collects its money. By contrast, a “good family” forgives its wayward sons and let them off the hook with a kiss. Families forgive, forget and nurture. Corporations pursue, win and collect—by contract and suit if necessary. These are not consistent ideologies. In that light, it is both misleading and fraudulent to equate “corporate values” with “family values.”
We should expect both deception and fraud from corporations because deception and fraud reveal dishonor. Honor means adhering to principles, no matter the circumstances. Honor means suffering for ideas, even when abandoning those ideas might abrogate the suffering. Corporations, however, cannot be honorable. They must win profits. That means “going with the flow” and breaking principles when necessary. In short, corporations must be “flexible,” not “honorable.” It is honorable to “tell the truth” and “to be honest.” But if honesty and truth endanger results, a corporate leader can be neither honest nor truthful. He has a duty to enrich his shareholders by any cost-effective means necessary. That is why he resorts to misleading characterizations, such as calling his for-profit entity “A Family Business.” If corporate leaders were honorable, they would refuse to equate their quest for private profit with tender family emotions. Yet they do not refuse. They serve their shareholders because they have a duty to make them rich. If calling the business “family-like” wins profits, they have no choice but to be dishonorable.
In the world of corporate morality, deception and fraud are not ethical transgressions. They are “calculated measures intended to win maximum profit for minimal risk.” A good corporation knows how to be unethical without ever arousing suspicion. Conscience and honor play no role in this analysis. It is unfortunate. But it is a jungle out there; and commerce is commerce.
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