Witch Hunting

I ran errands today. Had to do a snow tire change over and spent 31/2 hours at Discount Tire. I got there at 7:50. There were 11 people in front of me and 10 people behind me. This is only meaningful because they had Fox news on in the waiting area. At some point I heard the commentator say, "I think it's time for the attorneys to get involved in the power outage aftermath of hurricane Sandy." Huh? I immediately thought of attorneys in $1,000 suits delivering a summons to St. Peter naming God as the defendant in suit demonstrating their clients losing precious profits due to how the storm destroyed the power grid and the order of steps taken to fix it. I realized that what they really are going to do is sue the power companies for their loss of profit while waiting for the power to be restored.

Despite most peoples understanding, witch hunting did not become popular until the late 15th century when everyone was suitably Catholic enough to know that drought, disease, pestilence and poor harvests had to be caused be the demons in their midst; He would never allow His pious Catholics to suffer, so it had to be the spells of witches; Especially because these women seemed to possess knowledge on how to treat and frequently beat the diseases. Sure enough after they had found and burned enough of them, the good times came back, testimony to the efficacy of the inquisition.

Litigation is the modern form of witch hunting. When something impinges on ones greed it has to be somebody's fault and if you file enough law suits the "guilty" will settle to avoid further costs. It’s easy to profile the guilty, they are the ones with more money than you, so they had to get money that should have been yours. This gives them a self-deceptive feeling of control over the silly whims of a God that doesn't seem to understand how important it is for rich people to get richer. He doesn't even seem to care if the poor people get richer, but they can't afford attorneys.

The greatest flaw of a "corporation" is it isolates the stupid and their money from their stupidity. Partnerships and a sole proprietorship created a balance that when somebody was sufficiently stupid, they lost their capital and couldn't afford to be stupid any more. The corporation not only allows them to protect their money when they're stupid, it allows them to be stupid with someone else's money. The joke about socialism is that "eventually you run out of other peoples' money". The flaw in a capitalistic system based on the corporation is that you never seem to run out of stupider people that will let you lose their money in your stupid attempt to get rich. Greed is very effective in lowering the IQ of any population.

An important note: Stupid does not mean you did something that wasn't financially productive although that applies; it usually means you took someone else's money in a way that was not sufficiently complex to be able to keep the money you took. As for investors, you got to spend their money while you were losing yours, usually to at least a 10 to 1 ratio.