Mob and Wall Street
There's a popular scene in the Hindu epic, Mahabharatha. Queen Draupadi is gambled away in an unfair game of dice. She is dragged by her hair into a hall full of men by the evil prince Dushyasan. In a terrible turn of events, he starts to disrobe her because she is now his property and not a single man attempts to stop the unfolding adharma (the opposite of dharma). Draupadi in a moment of despair calls out to Lord Krishna for help. The ever dependable lord appears and rescues her. This shameful episode then leads to a terrible war which is central to the holy book, Bhagavad Gita. The entire Kaurava clan is killed to avenge this shameful event. This scene and the story are deeply imprinted in my mind. I have never been much of a gambler. It was no surprise that I found myself completely out of place when I visited Las Vegas to attend a conference in 2018.
I had an interesting conversation with my taxi driver while heading back to Las Vegas airport from MGM grand where the conference was held. I asked him how he kept kids insulated from the Sin City strip. My question was based on some of the stats I had heard and read about. Vegas has some of the most under-performing school districts in the country. Teen pregnancy, drug addiction, dropouts are amongst the highest in the nation. Vegas also has the 5th highest homicide rate in the nation. I am sure parents in Vegas area like any other parent in this world want their kids to go to the best school and get the best education possible.
The taxi driver said things used to be better under the mobs that ran Vegas between 50s and early 80s. They were driven by stronger moral sense and were very protective of children. They had day care centers away from the casinos and did not allow children inside the gaming areas. Things changed after Wall Street took over. Once Wall Street (MGM, Trump, etc) took over, they built entertainment (volcanoes, gondoliers, etc) and normalized gambling making it easy to indoctrinate future customers. He also felt that bad school districts was good for the casinos. An illiterate population helps feed human resource needs such as card dealers of the casinos.
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Microeconomics is considered a dismal science. There's a reason for it. It puts profits at front of center. If profits are indeed important, why are people like Bill Gates giving away the profits they worked so hard to earn? Does this altruistic sense prevail when profits are being made in the first place? Morals are a difficult discussion to have because they are so personal and often creep into faith. Whose morals? For example, Islamic law?prohibits the collection and payment of interest. Generally, it also prohibits trading in financial risk (seen as a form of gambling). It also prohibits investing in businesses considered haram (prohibited, forbidden), such as those selling alcohol or pork.
What are your (the readers) thoughts on this topic?
U.S. Healthcare | IVR | Customer Service Analytics | MS Computer Science | Sr. Product Analyst
1 年It was an interesting read. Yes, morality should be there in any and every kind of business. Morality supports business in long term. Should not be mixing religion and morality.
Health Innovation | Digital Strategy | Experience Design
1 年What an interesting read! Yes. Absolutely there is morality in business, as there should be. But is it central? Is it core to functioning as a business? Absolutely not. In school we learned about the "haves" and the "have nots". To me, this construct explains the psychology behind capitalism. Those who don't have it - seek it. Those who have it - will often do or allow immoral activity to keep it. Can we find altruism in business? Yes. But is this a result of individuals or actual corporate mandate? When "not for profits" actually have profits, just with better tax rates, it's hard to know for sure. As for morality and religion, I agree there's a slippery slope there. I think this is why corporations set a mission, vision, value statement as a way to define corporate "morals" while avoiding that slope and calling it culture. But as with faith, if you don't LIVE the culture, is it really the culture? (Insert John C. Maxwell quote here ??) The good news - we can and should do better. We must have courage to call-out counter culture activity; and while faith-based morals may be hard to get consensus on as individuals, corporate culture seems a reasonably accepted way to encourage and support basic human decency. ??