Gene Edward Veith posted today about an interesting thing; evidently a Chicago hedge fund named "Citadel" has provided $110 million in loans to a Chinese company producing tools for surveillance--in other words, to prevent the Chinese (and other?) people from achieving a degree of freedom.
As Dr. Veith notes, it is shameful enough that American investors and companies have worked with Hitler, Stalin, and other dictators. Personally, I think it is even more shameful that it's a hedge fund.
Why? Well, only the rich and powerful can invest using hedge funds, and hence we must infer that at least some of the rich and powerful in our country--who should know better than most others the hazards of Chinese communo-fascism--investing to preserve that system.
I'm not a Bircher, but I must admit that this kind of thing doesn't exactly counter the idea that the rich and powerful of the world are conspiring to confine the rest of us to serfdom. Certainly some of them, through the Citadel hedge fund, are doing exactly this whether they intend to or not.
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC
with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent caesars took their
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9 hours ago
4 comments:
Ah, greed knows no right nor wrong.
Well put, mercy. I believe that in most cases, short term sinful desires account for human behavior a lot better than complex conspiracies. Of course, in a sense, it's all part of a Grand Conspiracy, but the evil mastermind of that one is quite adept at using more petty desires to try to achieve his futile ends.
True--though I would have thought that those who have already attained wealth would be precisely those who are least likely to fall for the "short term fix" like this; and the "hedge fund" is precisely the kind of thing that those who ordinarily would think "long term" is designed for. It is, after all, to "hedge" against market fluctuations and preserve wealth.
Like y'all say, not surprising, but especially appalling, IMO.
Except that it's long established that the lack of need is no deterrent to greed, right? When the greedy man's barns are completely full, what does he do -- take a month off and go fishing and play with his grandkids? Nope, he calls up the architect and orders plans for bigger barns. The guy who goes fishing and plays with the grandkids is not the greedy one, he's the contented one blessed with prosperity.
And maybe "short term" wasn't quite the expression I was looking for. The contrast wasn't between next week and ten years from now, but between personal itches we want scratched (whether that's for a candy bar right now or security twenty years from now) versus overarching Master Plans to Reduce the Yeomanry to Serfdom for Generations.
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