I watched “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” tonight. It is a great example of the unbridled greed which overcomes Americans when they decide that they can be trusted to make decisions about other people’s lives and money. We regulate industries because we don’t trust people to those decisions. Why does we think that that trust can be turned on and off like a light switch? Either it’s one way or the other, by nature, and then it should stay that way.
20,000 people lost their jobs at Enron. Another 20,000 at Arthur-Andersen. Let that be a lesson to you. What, you’ve forgotten? Okay, near-Great Depression financial meltdown in banking, housing, dot-coms, you-name-it because Glass-Steagall was repealed. Another slap in the American face to wake America up to the way that unbridled greed freed by free-market Capitalism reminds us that we can’t trust each other.
Okay, it’s rude to say that Americans are stupid. It would be more kind to instead say gullible. Yes, Americans can be persuaded by a few calculating self-serving individuals who know how to manipulate the media. In some cases, clearly, powerful individuals simply ignore the majority opinion expressed by Americans in order to get their way. But, in any case, stupidity is about being slow and dim-witted. Slow to understand reality. Slow to realize you’ve been screwed. Slow to take action. Collectively dim-witted in analyzing reality to slowly come to a sensible conclusion. That’s more than gullible. But, what settles it is that in happens again and again, and nothing can be done to prevent us from making the same mistakes again and again. That’s just plain stupid.
Category: Stupidity