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Psychopaths Caused the Financial Crisis … And They Will Do It Again and Again Unless They Are Removed From Power
Bloomberg notes:
The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame [for the financial crisis].
Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”
As a result, Boddy argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, such people are “extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society.”
How do people with such obvious personality flaws make it to the top of seemingly successful corporations? Boddy says psychopaths take advantage of the “relative chaotic nature of the modern corporation,” including “rapid change, constant renewal” and high turnover of “key personnel.” Such circumstances allow them to ascend through a combination of “charm” and “charisma,” which makes “their behaviour invisible” and “makes them appear normal and even to be ideal leaders.”
***
Until the last third of the 20th century, he writes, companies were mostly stable and slow to change. Lifetime employment was a reasonable expectation and people rose through the ranks.
This stable environment meant corporate psychopaths “would be noticeable and identifiable as undesirable managers because of their selfish egotistical personalities and other ethical defects.”
For Wall Street — a rapidly changing and highly dynamic corporate environment if there ever was one, especially when the firms transformed themselves from private partnerships into public companies with quarterly reporting requirements — the trouble started when these charmers made their way to corner offices of important financial institutions.
Then, according to Boddy’s “Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,” these men were “able to influence the moral climate of the whole organization” to wield “considerable power.”
They “largely caused the crisis” because their “single- minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to an abandonment of the old-fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.”
***
He says the unnamed “they” seem “to be unaffected” by the corporate collapses they cause. These psychopaths “present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very convincing in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.”
The Independent reports:
Mr Boddy is not alone. In Jon Ronson’s widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test, Professor Robert Hare told the author: “I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well. Serial killer psychopaths ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”
***
A senior UK investment banker and I [were] discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.
He then makes an astonishing confession: “At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles.”
Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.
***
A 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas, the Chicago-based lawyer hired by a US court to investigate Lehman’s failure … revealed systemic chicanery within the bank; he described management failures and a destructive, internal culture of reckless risk-taking worthy of any psychopath.
So why wasn’t Mr Fuld spotted and stopped? I’ve concluded it’s the good old question of nature and nurture but with a new interpretation. As I see it, in its search for never-ending growth, the financial services sector has actively sought out monsters with natures like Mr Fuld and nurtured them with bonuses and praise.
***
Take Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS, for example. Before he racked up a corporate loss of £24.1bn, the highest in UK history, he was idolised by the City. In recognition of his work in ruthlessly cutting costs at Clydesdale Bank he got the nickname “Fred the Shred”, and he played that for all it was worth. He was later described as “a corporate Attila”, a title of which any psychopath would be proud.
PSYCHOPATHS HAVE DIFFERENT BRAIN CHEMISTRY FROM THE REST OF US
In October, we observed:
I noted last year:
Vanderbilt researchers have found that the brains of psychopaths have the dopamine abnormality creates a drive for rewards at any cost, and causing them to ignore risks.
As PhysOrg writes:
Abnormalities in how the nucleus accumbens, highlighted here, processes dopamine have been found in individuals with psychopathic traits and may be linked to violent, criminal behavior. Credit: Gregory R.Samanez-Larkin and Joshua W. Buckholtz
The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.
“This study underscores the importance of neurological research as it relates to behavior,” Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said. “The findings may help us find new ways to intervene before a personality trait becomes antisocial behavior.”
The results were published March 14, 2010, in Nature Neuroscience.
“Psychopaths are often thought of as cold-blooded criminals who take what they want without thinking about consequences,” Joshua Buckholtz, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology and lead author of the new study, said. “We found that a hyper-reactive dopamine reward system may be the foundation for some of the most problematic behaviors associated with psychopathy, such as violent crime, recidivism and substance abuse.”
Previous research on psychopathy has focused on what these individuals lack—fear, empathy and interpersonal skills. The new research, however, examines what they have in abundance—impulsivity, heightened attraction to rewards and risk taking. Importantly, it is these latter traits that are most closely linked with the violent and criminal aspects of psychopathy.
“There has been a long tradition of research on psychopathy that has focused on the lack of sensitivity to punishment and a lack of fear, but those traits are not particularly good predictors of violence or criminal behavior,” David Zald, associate professor of psychology and of psychiatry and co-author of the study, said. “Our data is suggesting that something might be happening on the other side of things. These individuals appear to have such a strong draw to reward—to the carrot—that it overwhelms the sense of risk or concern about the stick.”
To examine the relationship between dopamine and psychopathy, the researchers used positron emission tomography, or PET, imaging of the brain to measure dopamine release, in concert with a functional magnetic imaging, or fMRI, probe of the brain’s reward system.
“The really striking thing is with these two very different techniques we saw a very similar pattern—both were heightened in individuals with psychopathic traits,” Zald said.
Study volunteers were given a personality test to determine their level of psychopathic traits. These traits exist on a spectrum, with violent criminals falling at the extreme end of the spectrum. However, a normally functioning person can also have the traits, which include manipulativeness, egocentricity, aggression and risk taking.
In the first portion of the experiment, the researchers gave the volunteers a dose of amphetamine, or speed, and then scanned their brains using PET to view dopamine release in response to the stimulant. Substance abuse has been shown in the past to be associated with alterations in dopamine responses. Psychopathy is strongly associated with substance abuse.
“Our hypothesis was that psychopathic traits are also linked to dysfunction in dopamine reward circuitry,” Buckholtz said. “Consistent with what we thought, we found people with high levels of psychopathic traits had almost four times the amount of dopamine released in response to amphetamine.”
In the second portion of the experiment, the research subjects were told they would receive a monetary reward for completing a simple task. Their brains were scanned with fMRI while they were performing the task. The researchers found in those individuals with elevated psychopathic traits the dopamine reward area of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, was much more active while they were anticipating the monetary reward than in the other volunteers.
“It may be that because of these exaggerated dopamine responses, once they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths are unable to alter their attention until they get what they’re after,” Buckholtz said. Added Zald, “It’s not just that they don’t appreciate the potential threat, but that the anticipation or motivation for reward overwhelms those concerns.”
Has anyone tested the heads of the too big to fails for this dopamine abnormality?
What are the odds that they have it? And if they have it, what are the odds that they will voluntarily start acting responsibly, especially given the broken incentive system?
Experts also tell us that many politicians also share traits with serial killers. Specifically, the Los Angeles Times noted in 2009:
Using his law enforcement experience and data drawn from the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit, Jim Kouri has collected a series of personality traits common to a couple of professions.
Kouri, who’s a vice president of the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police, has assembled traits such as superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others.
These traits, Kouri points out in his analysis, are common to psychopathic serial killers.
But — and here’s the part that may spark some controversy and defensive discussion — these traits are also common to American politicians. (Maybe you already suspected.)
Yup. Violent homicide aside, our elected officials often show many of the exact same character traits as criminal nut-jobs, who run from police but not for office.
Kouri notes that these criminals are psychologically capable of committing their dirty deeds free of any concern for social, moral or legal consequences and with absolutely no remorse.
“This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want,” he wrote. “Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders.”
***
”While many political leaders will deny the assessment regarding their similarities with serial killers and other career criminals, it is part of a psychopathic profile that may be used in assessing the behaviors of many officials and lawmakers at all levels of government.”
***
Studies also show that the wealthy are less empathic than those with more modest wealth, and so:
The idea of nobless oblige or trickle-down economics, certain versions of it, is bull,” Keltner added. “Our data say you cannot rely on the wealthy to give back. The ‘thousand points of light’—this rise of compassion in the wealthy to fix all the problems of society—is improbable, psychologically.”
Those in the upper-class tend to hoard resources and be less generous than they could be.
Given that many in Congress and top government posts are multi-millionaires, the study might help explain why politicians seem only to work to make themselves wealthier and to help their wealthy buddies.
We will remain disempowered if we assume that the super-elites are “like us”. Unless we learn to spot “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, we will continue to fall prey to their scams.
UNLESS WE REMOVE THE PSYCHOPATHS FROM POWER, THEY WILL CAUSE MORE AND MORE DESTRUCTION
The inmates are still running the asylum.
Anyone who knows Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein or the other Wall Street “leaders” can tell you that they haven’t changed a bit since 2008. They are not repentent for their role in the financial crisis. They don’t feel bad that the taxpayers have had to bail them out again and again … and that they have used that money to enrich themselves and stick it to the little guy.
As the Independent notes:
Mr Ronson reports: “Justice departments and parole boards all over the world have accepted Hare’s contention that psychopaths are quite simply incurable and everyone should concentrate their energies instead on learning how to root them out.”
But, far from being rooted out, they are still in place and often in positions of even greater power.
As Mr Boddy warns: “The very same corporate psychopaths, who probably caused the crisis by their self-seeking greed and avarice, are now advising governments on how to get out of the crisis. Further, if the corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis is correct, then we are now far from the end of the crisis. Indeed, it is only the end of the beginning.”
I’ve been saying the same thing since 2008:
Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
Its like a thief who has been arrested 5 times for burglary. Even though he says all the right things to the judge at sentencing, the judge is still going to throw the book at him.
If the thief is appointed to head a government commission on corruption, do you think people will have confidence in the commission or its proposed actions?
***
[Those in power] may be saying nice things about fixing the economy, shoring up the financial system and helping American citizens, but people don’t believe them anymore. They’ve been proven liars one too many times.
***
The only thing that can restore confidence in the economy and the financial system is to replace the whole lot of them (tar and feather them) with honest leaders who will do what’s best for the people.
Forget the “toxic debt” that the talking heads keep referring to. The only way to restore confidence is to get rid of the “toxic leaders” who caused the mess.
I noted in October:
The main demand of the Egyptian protesters was that Hosni Mubarak and his cronies leave power.
Why should the demands of the American protesters be held to a higher standard?
As former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson notes, the American finance industry has effectively captured our government in a “quiet coup”, a state of affairs that is at the center of many emerging-market crises, and that recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.
***
The U.S. has become a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, a banana republic, a socialist or fascist state … which acts without the consent of the governed. There is a malignant symbiotic relationship between the governmental leaders and their cronies, which makes a handful rich at the public trough (in the same way that the Mubarak family raked in between U.S. $40 and $70 billion dollars through bribes and cronyism).
Remember, Mubarak pretended that he was going to offer concessions or negotiate several times. But the protesters would have none of it. They demanded Mubarak leave.
The same government despots (Bernanke and the rest of the knuckleheads at the Fed, Geithner, and various other Goldman alums and proteges of Robert Rubin) and the same Wall Street manipulators (Blankfein, Dimon, etc.) are still on their thrones causing mischief. Nothing will change while these guys are still in charge.
Why can’t Americans – like the Egyptians – demand that the bums be thrown out?
While America’s protesters don’t need to give any list of official demands (see this, this and this), breaking up the unholy alliance which is destroying our country and removing vampires from both government and Wall Street who are most responsible for blocking reform is a perfectly good demand all by itself. As Gordon Duff – senior editor at Veterans Today – says, it’s “time for regime change” in the U.S.
Postscript: The fact – as discussed above – that top leaders may have psychopathic characteristics may be helpful in assessing questions such as:
- Whether rogue government personnel would ever carry out hanky panky to justify their policy objectives
- Whether our leaders could really cover up something as awful as cancer from nuclear accidents to promote their polices
- Why our leaders want to emulate China by gutting the Internet
- Whether government workers could actually label as suspected terrorists anyone who simply questions war, protests anything, asks questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supports Ron Paul, is a libertarian, holds gold, stocks up on more than 7 days of food, or investigates factory farming
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To be sure, it is necessary to demarcate the productive rich from the parasitic rich. The former is never lacking in vibrant & viable ideas - the latter, a sophisticated bloodsucker.
This is a great piece, well done GW.
Really goes to show too that the insanity at the top, trickle at the bottom. Let London Financiers loot people's wealths? Expect looters for trainers. Have a Congress led by selfish and ignorant leaders? Well then you will have selfish, ignorant people. Without a penchant for consequences. Why should they? Wall St execs get to loot the system, why not the kid from the inner city?
Jeremy Irons' portrayal of the fictional Fuld/Blankfein/RBS character in "Margin Call" was brilliant.
Look George, it's time you finally got on the side of the solution, and quit being the problem. First, your essay on the psychopathic criminals in power is absolutely correct. Thing is, you want make it worse!
Here's the deal. You CANNOT remove criminals from power (as a student of history, this should be very, very obvious). What you can do though, is to remove the power from the criminals. How? Quit empowering them!
For example, in a society without a centralized power structure, how many people could Hitler kill? Tens? Hundreds? Maybe thousands, if he was rich and had his own private army. Now, put him into an elected office, and as a consequence, millions die.
Now, while I don't expect this to get through to you, there might be others here (likely younger) who have yet to adopt the ethos of evil that you champion constantly. As long as you insist upon your immoral crusade, I will come here to counter it with logical reality.
GW has no solutions now and never has had any solutions.
He's just a whining pseudo-patriot crybaby ...sorta like OWS morons... constantly bitching about the problems with no fucking clue how to solve them.
I on the other hand consistently tell people America will not be saved, America will go down into the dustbin of history, so save yourself instead.
The Iowa caucus yesterday more or less proved Ron Paul has no chance of being elected president, so all you crazy people out there hoping Ron Paul would be the "messiah" saving America can give up that foolish dream, hopefully come back to reality, and make plans to save yourself from America's coming downfall.
And no, "God" isn't going to save America either, so all you religious nutcases can give up that foolish fantasy too.
And no, there won't be any "revolution" either. If it hasn't happened by now, it won't happen at all.
Frankly I'm beginning to wonder if America-as-we-know-it will survive another presidential term, and no, it doesn't matter who is elected.
GW might enjoy giving blow-by-blow descriptions of America's slow collapse, but that's all it is.
you're just a regular old fartshine from a turd, aren't you?
quit mainlining the geritol - that shit'll kill ya - some good old fashioned crack might brighten up that sour puss...
I can see it now, a play on the Capital One credit card ads.
Zoom in on a crime scene with police tape, a shot of Hannibal Lechter, a close up of a major politician smiling and shaking hands :
"Who's in your refrigerator?"
It takes a psychopathic culture in an organization to even label certain individuals as 'key personnel'. (as though the others aren't important also!)
*Yawn*
Another demented, conspiracist rant from George Washington.
It is simply dishonorable to associate high-ranking, intellectual, educated and productive members of our society with these repulsive beings known as psychopaths, and you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking one second about labeling honourable figures like Dr. Ben Bernanke PhD., Harvey Golub, Lloyd Blankfein or Jamie Dimon as such.
Hamy! You are the Best!
Merry Late Christmas!
Happy New Year!
and God love and Bless You and Yours!!
Y'all - Hamy is a satirist here. Ringing your bell. Dat's funny shit.
they would have to be human to fit within the definition of psychopath.
With true American blowhards like Newt Loot it is any wonder this societial crash is inevitable?
Sure he cheated on two wives, but he would never cheat on the middle class... unless there was an upper class.
2012 Predictions
By Bill Blum
Happy New Year. Here's what to look forward to.JANUARY 22: Congress passes a law requiring that all persons arrested in anti-war demonstrations be sterilized. House Speaker John Boehner declares it is "God's will". House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she supports the law but that she has some reservation because there's no provision for a right of appeal.
FEBRUARY 15: Ron Paul assassinated by man named Oswald Harvey.
FEBRUARY 18: Oswald Harvey, while in solitary confinement and guarded round the clock by 1200 policemen and the entire 3rd Army Brigade, is killed by man named Ruby Jackson.
FEBRUARY 26: Ruby Jackson suddenly dies in prison of a rare Asian disease heretofore unknown in the Western Hemisphere.
MARCH 6: US President Hopey Changey announces new draconian sanctions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, declaring that they all possess weapons of mass destruction, are an imminent threat to the United States, have close ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban, are aiding Islamic terrorists in Somalia, were involved in 9-11, played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor, do not believe in God or American Exceptionalism, and are all "really bad guys".
APRIL 1: Military forces overthrow Evo Morales in Bolivia. US State Department decries the loss of democracy.
APRIL 2: US recognizes the new Bolivian military junta, sells it 100 jet fighters and 200 tanks.
APRIL 3: Revolution breaks out in Bolivia endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines are sent to La Paz to quell the uprising.
APRIL 8: Dick Cheney announces from his hospital bed that the United States has finally discovered caches of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — "So all those doubters can now just go 'F' themselves." The former vice-president, however, refuses to provide any details of the find because, he says, to do so might reveal intelligence sources or methods.
APRIL 10: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, General Electric, General Motors, AT&T, Ford, and IBM merge to form "Free Enterprise, Inc."
APRIL 16: Free Enterprise, Inc. seeks to purchase Guatemala and Haiti. Citigroup refuses to sell.
APRIL 18: Free Enterprise, Inc. purchases Citigroup.
MAY 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republicans so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check. In celebration of the change the new party calls for eliminating the sales tax on yachts.
MAY 11: China claims to have shot down an American spy plane over the center of China. State Department categorically denies the story.
MAY 12: State Department admits that an American plane may have "inadvertently" strayed 2,000 miles into China, but denies that it was a spy plane.
MAY 13: State Department admits that the plane may have been a spy plane but denies that it was piloted by a US government employee.
MAY 14: State Department admits that the pilot was a civilian employee of a Defense Department contractor but denies that China exists.
JUNE 11: Homeland Security announces plan to collect the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States.
JULY 1: The air in Los Angeles reaches so bad a pollution level that the rich begin to hire undocumented workers to breathe for them.
AUGUST 6: The Justice Department announces that six people have been arrested in New York in connection with a plan to bomb the United Nations, the Empire State Building, the Times Square subway station, Madison Square Garden, and Lincoln Center.
AUGUST 7: Charges are dropped against four of "The New York Six" when it is determined that they are FBI agents.
AUGUST 16: At a major demonstration in Washington, the Tea Party demands an end to all government expenditures. They also warn Congress not to touch Social Security or Medicare.
AUGUST 26: Texas executes a 16-year-old girl for having an abortion and a 12-year-old boy for possession of marijuana.
SEPTEMBER 3: The Labor Department announces that Labor Day will become a celebration of America's gratitude to its corporations, a day dedicated to the memory of J.P. Morgan and Pinkerton strike breakers killed in the line of duty.
SEPTEMBER 12: The draft is reinstated for males and females, ages 16 to 45. Those who are missing a limb or are blind can apply for non-combat roles.
SEPTEMBER 14: Riots breaks out in 24 American cities in protest of the new draft. 200,000 American troops are brought home from Afghanistan, Iraq, and 25 other countries to put down the riots.
SEPTEMBER 28: The Tea Party calls for giving embryos the vote.
OCTOBER 19: Cops the world over form a new association, Policemen's International Governing Society. PIGS announces that its first goal will be to mount a campaign against the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty, in those countries where the quaint notion still dwells.
NOVEMBER 8: The turnout for the US presidential election is 9.6%. The voting ballots are all imprinted: "From one person, one vote, to one dollar, one vote." The winner is "None of the above".
NOVEMBER 11: US prison population reaches 2.5 million. It is determined that at least 70 percent of the prisoners would not have been incarcerated a century ago, for the acts they committed were then not criminal violations.
DECEMBER 3: Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets.
DECEMBER 16: The Occupy Movement sets up a tent on the White House lawn. An hour later a missile fired from a drone leaves but a thin wisp of smoke.
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer101.html
DECEMBER 21: It turns out the Mayans were right. The entire federal government of the USSA vanishes like a fart in a category 5 cyclone.
Turns out 2012 was a good year afterall.
Happy New Year!
brilliant! why dint i think of that... :/
Enter The Taliban
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/NA04Df01.html
"No matter what the Chinese may say about 2012 being the year of the dragon, this is going to be the year of the Taliban"
US, Iran discard war drums, return to diplomacy?
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2012/01/02/us-iran-discard-war-dru...
Cut the Suckers Off
Stop Paying Your Taxes (and propping these tossers/bankers up)
a Tax Revolt is the fastest most effective and finest protest (it works)
I wonder if Dr. Boddy's theory applies equally to Politicians.
“Anyone who makes decisions that affect significant numbers of other people, concerning issues of corporate social responsibility or toxic waste, for example, or concerning mass financial markets or mass employment, should be screened to make sure that they are, at the very least, not psychopaths and at most are actually people who care about others,” - Dr. C Boddy
I say before the caucuses and primaries, candidates should get tested and screened for psychopathy, just like screening for diseases when donating blood.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-03/did-psychopaths-take-over-wall-...
or can at least fake it...
i guess they never heard of the story of The Little boy who cried wolf.......people do not believe a word they say and they never will again.......probably Obamas biggest problem
You're onto something there. The trick to survival in mainstream America today is to appear to believe what you're told while believing in nothing.
+1 and then some...
that just went into my famous quotes .txt.
No shit, blah blah blah. Nothing changes until the real supply line disruptions start happening and people start starving (or can't watch the bloody boob tube).
Boring world indeed.
we saw it comming, the rize of psychopaths, but all said : not immoral just amoral....
so they continued on, now you get an "amoral" managment of your work, an "amoral" concentration in the news industry, an "amoral" choice making between people health, and sharholders health...
an "amoral" axept of elite concentration, and an "amoral" negation of powers division, and independence....
Things get amoral only in equilibrium of each one morality.... so stop fighting the idea of unions...
PS: my english is probably bad, cause i am french.
sorry, can't agree - all positions of powers attracted this kind of people since ever
from time to time one or two generations just cherish the illusion that "everything is fine"
Monsier Wat,
The rise of the psychopaths coincides with the rise of the state, for how else could a paltry 1% of the population dominate the world as they do?
To better understand, read Free Radical here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-people-lie-psychopathology-“public-servant”-and-sociopathology-state
P.S. I wish my French were as good as your English.
It would be damned near impossible for "1%" of the population to dominate anything if there was not an apathetic 65% (or more) supporting them either willingly or by default.
Put Trav in the apathetic classification, only a wannabe company man would tirade against people exchanging their narco supernotes for something so evil as Silver.
Lunatic, I suggest you read up on the source of their power. Then, perhaps, you'll understand why the 65% (or whatever) are all but powerless against it . . .
http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/state1.htm
http://www.barefootsworld.net/nockoets0.html
. . . and why its days are numbered . . .
http://argo.zerohedge.org/article/guest-post-infinite-hedge-long-enough-...
In America, everything is bad about you 'cuz you're French.
Just kidding!
Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
unions ok maybe......public unions Hell No !!!
I worked for many years with Laborers and Teamster truckers and I got no problem with them. They work hard for their bennies. Public employee unions are a travesty though.
I'm no fan of public unions, but isn't "strength in numbers" covered under "natural law?" The distinction between the public and private sector in this regard seems forced.
Your English is a lot better than my French.
Seconded.