Thursday, October 10, 2013

The World Is Made for Edward Burkhardt

Remember the CEO of Rail World Inc., and owner of the MMA trains that derailed in Lac-Megantic, killing 42 people? He pushed deregulation, fought unions, pursued profit over safety, and when the inevitable happened, blamed everyone but himself and had MMA declare bankruptcy so as to escape paying for his own disaster.

This is the naked face of capitalism. This sort of shriveled soul is the hero in an Ayn Rand novel. (That horrible writer's main character pretended to run a railroad herself!) This is how capitalism avoids being as bad as Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Burkhardt wasn't setting out to deliberately kill anyone. He just wanted to make a buck. So, when people die (as was inevitable) he can delude himself into saying that it was just one of those crazy things.

In short, he's a child in a man's body. And we give these imbeciles free rein of their selfish ambition because we've elevated their materialistic values to our highest values. It's a world of clods. Made by clods for other murderous clods.

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