My favorite comment so far on this piece over at HuffPo was this:
"This is not just limited to the banks though but pretty much any industry. The way the profit system is structured, it rewards corrupt behavior like this. Being risky in banking generates large amounts of profit. Using cheaper ingredients and abusing animals generates large amounts of profit. Replacing humans in the workforce with machine automation generates large amounts of profit. The profit system itself is one of the real culprits for a lot of what is happening in the world. Efficiency, sustainability and abundance are known enemies of profit as based on the laws of supply and demand. And it seems to perpetuate this behavior the media always puts those making the most money and having the most material wealth on this pedestal making everyone else around them strive to have what they have and to do whatever is necessary to achieve that status. Our culture is one that is fundamentally flawed and while the profit system is but one component of that flawed system the real root cause of all this is the monetary system and more importantly, fractional reserve banking."
Great post by Cenk and good comment. I don't know if this helps, but continued replacement of workers by machines was a major consequence of Karl Marx's theoretical analysis of "surplus value [of labor]" in capitalism. That doesn't make Marx right in all things, but there it is.
I hope we can spread Cenk's post on this topic (probably omitting my reference to Marx, I admit!) to the widest possible audience.
"No, you are a paid blogger assigned to counter anyone that posts something negative about the government or Obama." by Mcamelyne II on 05/17/2011
