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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Feel free to change definitions, don’t tell anybody, and hold others responsible for your redefinitions. I guess that’s what it means to be ‘playful’ with words.

I really am getting a feel for this fantastical world you live in. I thought was just emotionally reacting to an egregiously unfair, irrational comment on your part, but given a couple days reflection, I stand by my initial assessment: sad and small.

But then again, maybe I’m being playful with those words, and I’m really intending “sad” to mean “insightful” and “small” to mean “clever”. We’ll just never know with your new set of rules. Rather liberating, knowing I can make things mean other things retroactively.

Profiteer: one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency

Best case scenerio is you don’t know the definition of the words you use.

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.

And it’s a real shame too. I suppose they’ll just have to be comforted by their billions of dollars as they sell munitions to warlords in Africa and South Asia and medicine for the highest possible price they can extract from a dying man.

If I am understanding your lament here: As much as they need their excessive profits, they need love.

It’s a sad commentary on a society that doesn’t allow these people to make and keep and charge whatever they can in, at best (in many cases), morally murky goods and services, but doesn’t also praise and revere them in parades and awards ceremonies.

And it’s a real development, this. John Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt had their praises sung by governments, commonfolk, and newspapers for all the monopolizing and price-gouging they inflicted.

Show some perspective, man! Rather than just reacting to newspaper headlines with your trademark recalcitrance.

Chuckles