How did we let this scourge become so widespread?

It’s nice to see some perspective brought to my blog. Equating all those who earn a profit with arms dealers who illegally sell munitions to warlords and Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, is a certainly a premise I can’t hope to assail. I would much prefer an economy where everyone works for non-profits that suck funds from the public treasury through grants and use the money to help immigrants start child-prostitution rings.

I was just racing to the lowest common denominator, like you did. If all people who are working to make a profit are like arms dealers to warlords, then all people who work for non-profits are like the ACORN employees who were eager to help immigrants start a child prostitution ring.

I honestly don’t care if those who earn a profit are loved or hated. You are right, they have their reward. However, those who are responsible for losing tens of billions of dollars deserve to be locked up or pilloried or at the very least fired. I don’t understand why you consider this position to be controversial.

Other best case scenario: I operate from a vantage point where words are defined by more than dictionaries. In the case of your average Obama supporter, an unreasonable profit is arguably any profit at all. This is evidenced by those who bemoan the “excessive” profits of the healthcare insurance companies, when the profit margins of these companies are relatively low. I know what the word means, and I used it playfully.

I believe you exaggerate. Bottom line: I know what the word profiteer means. I believe that is not a stretch to assume that those who sympathize with Obama and his policies consider anyone who makes a profit doing anything to be a profiteer. If I was reading this aloud I would have read the word “profiteer” with an intonation that would have implied that I was using the work facetiously. I am not completely changing the defintion, but there is more to language than just dictionary definitions. Tone, context, authorial intent, reader’s frame of reference and other factors will alter what “words actually mean.” Although I am pretty sure you don’t care about this.

To address your first comment, you are not understanding me correctly. I am not arguing that those who make a profit should be loved. However, it is strange that they should be painted in a negative light, while those who destroy wealth and value, run up massive deficits, and give away something they don’t have should be painted positively. Semantic technicalities aside, I don’t see what you are arguing for. So you don’t like “profiteers,” I get it. So let’s look at the alternative. Let’s focus on the bailout of the auto companies, that is currently running a $25 billion net loss. “Profiteer” bondholders were told to basically screw themselves and get to the back of the line, nullifying not just specific legal contracts, but the very idea of a legal contract in general. The currency of legal contracts gets exchanged for the currency of political pandering as the Unions that voted heavily for Obama are given the farm. Not surprisingly, the companies continue to bleed money. I say that I think this is stupid, and it isn’t too many logical steps later, and I am being called an arse and the value of my existence is being questioned.

I have to say that I see your world as equally fantastical.

p.s. for the record, according to my rules, sad and small do mean insightful and clever, so thanks for the compliment.
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