Yes, because it’s worked so well in thousands of years of Monarchies and Aristocracies, and The Gilded Age here in America.
2.
Napoleon
Yes, greed, just like religious extremism, slavery and war have brought a virtual Paradise on Earth at many times during human history.
3.
TenguPhule
Greed Mass Executions of the Stupid Evil Rich can be used to solve the World’s Woes
Corrected. Where’s my pundit paycheck?
4.
Richard
Soylent Green is profitable.
5.
taylormattd
My goodness, how contrarian! How bracing! Very clever! Unique even! I never thought about it that way before! I have a crooked smirk on my face as I read that!
Fockin’ A. Sometimes I wish al-qaeda would just fly a plane into the internet.
6.
Butch
I noticed that Mr. Yglesias jumped onto the facile contrarianism bandwagon the moment he landed at Slate; note today’s piece on how actually really really good the underfunded schools in Texas are.
7.
MikeJ
@c u n d gulag: Exactly. It can hardly be argued that this is an untested hypothesis.
8.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
“We haz a sad”
– signed: Wrath, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony.
__ Sloth was queried but didn’t return our request for comment in time for publication.
9.
taylormattd
@Napoleon: Do you get the feeling the author just Netflixed the movie Wall Street, and is trying to pass it off as insight?
10.
fasteddie9318
Has Slate covered the Sandusky case yet? I’m expecting a piece called “Pederasty: Can It Save Our Sullen Teens and Pre-Teens by Boosting Their Self-Esteem?”
11.
taylormattd
@Butch: Oh no, Yglesias has had a massive hardon for ending public education via charter schools since he started blogging at 16 or however old he was then.
12.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“If I shoot you in the foot, your head will stop hurting.”
13.
fasteddie9318
Big Media Matt has always recognized society’s need for uneducated poors to clean his car and toilets and the like.
14.
pragmatism
slate is so very contrarian. so very brave–as in the paul ryan is brave sense.
15.
jibeaux
Still love Ezra Klein’s line —
Buchanan goes so far as to say that “Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps,” thus laying blame for the Holocaust squarely on the shoulders of the Allied forces. Now that’s counterintuitive!
Your move, Slate.
16.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
to be fair, so can sloth, if the right 2% of the human population sat on its ass eating cheetoes and watching barney miller, the world could possibly get better for the rest of us.
When are people going to start remembering that the character that spouted that shit WENT TO PRISON for acting on his ethos, because his ethos demanded criminal, harmful actions?!
AAAUUUUUGGHHHHH, I was smarter than this 30 year ago!
I noticed that Mr. Yglesias jumped onto the facile contrarianism bandwagon the moment he landed at Slate
He might have moved a bit more in that direction after changing jobs, but it was a pre-existing condition. How do you think he got hired at Slate in the first place?
21.
Satanicpanic
@fasteddie9318: Poe’s Law needs to widened to include contrarianism
22.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Snowwy: Remember, most of these people think that they are either John Galt or the industry leaders, rather than realizing they are the company executives that got left behind.
23.
mdblanche
@fasteddie9318: Slate-y premise, but something about your headline feels off. I think it’s that question mark you put in there.
@jibeaux:
1. Britain surrenders
2. ?????
3. No Holocaust!
Yes, because companies will be clamoring for the opportunity to invest the long term time and resources needed into making politically dodgy and economically impoverished regions viable and economically healthy, because even though it would look really bad on their quarterly balance sheets, drive down profits and bonuses, and make stockholders question the sanity of the board of directors, they realize that…
Remember, most of these people think that they are either John Galt or the industry leaders, rather than realizing they are the company executives that got left behind.
I’ve got this image in my head of one of those evangelical Rapture novels and movies, only this time with all the duped conservatives “left behind.”
30.
Amir Khalid
@bogdan:
Well, there’s Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon for legal analysis. And if you’re feeling generous, I guess maybe Farhad Manjoo for tech as well. But aside from them, not really.
31.
El Cid
See! It’s contrary! It’s contrary to so many people who think greed is bad!
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Sorry, but my fiction is better than their fiction. At least mine is attached to reality *somewhere*.
Pardon me, I can see I need more tranquilizer.
34.
Mark S.
The article in question isn’t very contrarian and not as horrible as the title would suggest. The article might have been interesting if it left out the Gordan Gecko bullshit and just concentrated on its topic: measurement of “philanthocapitalist” ventures.
One philanthrocapitalist cites a real-world example of donors funding a new social business aiming at both profit and purpose for $150,000 a year. In that case, running proper trials to measure real-world impact would have cost $100,000. The donors refused, insisting that the money go straight to helping people in need, not measurement and metrics.
That’s not too surprising, considering these trials would have cost 2/3 of the annual budget.
While this sounds compassionate—even reasonable—it can be a dangerously unhelpful stance to take if that new social business was actually harming the people it sought to help, or even if it was just ineptly crowding out other social entrepreneurs or government agencies that could have done a better job.
It would be nice to know what this social business was actually doing and if there was really any danger that it was actually harming people. But the author had already gotten to his 1,000 word limit, so it was back to “Can greed be used for good?”
__
Ah yes, I remember the first time a friend of mine read Ayn Rand.
.
40.
RSA
@JGabriel: Maybe it’s a translation of “The Virtue of Selfishness” into Russian and then back into English.
41.
bootsy
Next Time: War, The Solution For The Peacetime Blues
42.
El Cid
@Jamey: Fucking Ronald Reagan and his expanding the EITC on the advice of and support of the librul commie Heritage Foundation.
It’s almost as if conservatives used to view income taxes as inherently evil and that taxes kept poor people from earning their way out of poverty and therefore the most effective way of removing the most proportionately evil yoke from the honest poor would be to lower their income taxes based upon their actual work.
43.
TenguPhule
They tried that during the French Revolution and elsewhere.
Wrong. They didn’t execute enough of them.
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c u n d gulag
Yes, because it’s worked so well in thousands of years of Monarchies and Aristocracies, and The Gilded Age here in America.
Napoleon
Yes, greed, just like religious extremism, slavery and war have brought a virtual Paradise on Earth at many times during human history.
TenguPhule
Corrected. Where’s my pundit paycheck?
Richard
Soylent Green is profitable.
taylormattd
My goodness, how contrarian! How bracing! Very clever! Unique even! I never thought about it that way before! I have a crooked smirk on my face as I read that!
Fockin’ A. Sometimes I wish al-qaeda would just fly a plane into the internet.
Butch
I noticed that Mr. Yglesias jumped onto the facile contrarianism bandwagon the moment he landed at Slate; note today’s piece on how actually really really good the underfunded schools in Texas are.
MikeJ
@c u n d gulag: Exactly. It can hardly be argued that this is an untested hypothesis.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
“We haz a sad”
– signed: Wrath, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony.
__
Sloth was queried but didn’t return our request for comment in time for publication.
taylormattd
@Napoleon: Do you get the feeling the author just Netflixed the movie Wall Street, and is trying to pass it off as insight?
fasteddie9318
Has Slate covered the Sandusky case yet? I’m expecting a piece called “Pederasty: Can It Save Our Sullen Teens and Pre-Teens by Boosting Their Self-Esteem?”
taylormattd
@Butch: Oh no, Yglesias has had a massive hardon for ending public education via charter schools since he started blogging at 16 or however old he was then.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“If I shoot you in the foot, your head will stop hurting.”
fasteddie9318
Big Media Matt has always recognized society’s need for uneducated poors to clean his car and toilets and the like.
pragmatism
slate is so very contrarian. so very brave–as in the paul ryan is brave sense.
jibeaux
Still love Ezra Klein’s line —
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
to be fair, so can sloth, if the right 2% of the human population sat on its ass eating cheetoes and watching barney miller, the world could possibly get better for the rest of us.
Lev
Who wrote that article? Dennis Kozlowski? Charles Koch? Gordon Gekko?
jibeaux
@jibeaux: D’oh, “Your move, Slate” should also be attributed to Ezra.
Snowwy
When are people going to start remembering that the character that spouted that shit WENT TO PRISON for acting on his ethos, because his ethos demanded criminal, harmful actions?!
AAAUUUUUGGHHHHH, I was smarter than this 30 year ago!
Roger Moore
@Butch:
He might have moved a bit more in that direction after changing jobs, but it was a pre-existing condition. How do you think he got hired at Slate in the first place?
Satanicpanic
@fasteddie9318: Poe’s Law needs to widened to include contrarianism
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Snowwy: Remember, most of these people think that they are either John Galt or the industry leaders, rather than realizing they are the company executives that got left behind.
mdblanche
@fasteddie9318: Slate-y premise, but something about your headline feels off. I think it’s that question mark you put in there.
@jibeaux:
1. Britain surrenders
2. ?????
3. No Holocaust!
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
At least they didn’t say Creed.
Comrade Dread
Yes, because companies will be clamoring for the opportunity to invest the long term time and resources needed into making politically dodgy and economically impoverished regions viable and economically healthy, because even though it would look really bad on their quarterly balance sheets, drive down profits and bonuses, and make stockholders question the sanity of the board of directors, they realize that…
Uh…
Something about…?
Fuck… pass the scotch.
taylormattd
@the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady): Yes, that is actually the worst thing ever posted to Slate.
bogdan
Other than slowing down to look at the car wreck, is there any reason to visit Slate anymore?
Tone In DC
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
LULz.
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
They tried that during the French Revolution and elsewhere. Didn’t work, either.
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’ve got this image in my head of one of those evangelical Rapture novels and movies, only this time with all the duped conservatives “left behind.”
Amir Khalid
@bogdan:
Well, there’s Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon for legal analysis. And if you’re feeling generous, I guess maybe Farhad Manjoo for tech as well. But aside from them, not really.
El Cid
See! It’s contrary! It’s contrary to so many people who think greed is bad!
PeakVT
@bogdan: Lithwick, maybe, though I only read her work when somebody links to it.
Snowwy
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Sorry, but my fiction is better than their fiction. At least mine is attached to reality *somewhere*.
Pardon me, I can see I need more tranquilizer.
Mark S.
The article in question isn’t very contrarian and not as horrible as the title would suggest. The article might have been interesting if it left out the Gordan Gecko bullshit and just concentrated on its topic: measurement of “philanthocapitalist” ventures.
That’s not too surprising, considering these trials would have cost 2/3 of the annual budget.
It would be nice to know what this social business was actually doing and if there was really any danger that it was actually harming people. But the author had already gotten to his 1,000 word limit, so it was back to “Can greed be used for good?”
Jamey
http://static1.firedoglake.com/29/files/2012/04/warrencapture001.jpg
Too bad the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about greed.
(Or vanity.)
chrismealy
How this one?
This is not a joke. It’s on Slate right now.
PeakVT
@Jamey: Or lying.
Freddie deBoer
Ugh. Perhaps the ultimate Slate headline.
JGabriel
__
__
Slate via DougJ @ Top:
__
Ah yes, I remember the first time a friend of mine read Ayn Rand.
.
RSA
@JGabriel: Maybe it’s a translation of “The Virtue of Selfishness” into Russian and then back into English.
bootsy
Next Time: War, The Solution For The Peacetime Blues
El Cid
@Jamey: Fucking Ronald Reagan and his expanding the EITC on the advice of and support of the librul commie Heritage Foundation.
It’s almost as if conservatives used to view income taxes as inherently evil and that taxes kept poor people from earning their way out of poverty and therefore the most effective way of removing the most proportionately evil yoke from the honest poor would be to lower their income taxes based upon their actual work.
TenguPhule
Wrong. They didn’t execute enough of them.