Billion-Dollar Paydays :
Even on Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure of success, the size of the winnings makes some uneasy.NyTimes 16.Apr.08
“There is nothing wrong with it — it’s not illegal,” said William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of the bond fund Pimco. “But it’s ugly.”
via LABiz
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Well that is what's wrong with it - it's ugly. Laws are made to prevent ugly things from happening. First there were ugly things, then there were laws against them. Then there were new ugly things, then new laws. Ugly's why we have laws in the first place.
But it got turned inside out, and anything that wasn't certified and codified as wrong became alright.
The difference between something being right or wrong, and something being legal or illegal is profound.
The street version is:
If somethin's not right, it's wrong.
That has nothing to do with laws.
Ultimately morality is about ugliness, not rules. Over-reliance on logic and law creates inhuman gaps in the social order that are exploited by the amoral and clever.
By constantly stressing the primacy of legality over the vague and indefinable but consistently superior aesthetic, and at the same time reducing the aesthetic to a commodifiable luxury in privileged lives, the power that drives this age has created its own extra-legal landscape. The laws never catch up to what's evolving to avoid them.
It's not illegal, but it's ugly. Ugly's worse.
