Killing For Money

Our national software problem.



From the billionaire illegal Ponzi schemer...

...to the billionaire legal Ponzi CEO.

From the K-Street lobbyist who pimps for monsters...

...to the energy market baron who rips off little old ladies.

From the junk bond predator...

...to the S&L looter.

And from the frightening, fictional gangster...

...to the frighteningly real authoritarian...

...each of these men share at least one common trait: they are all perfect poster boys for the idea of the “Rational Economic Agent.”

From Wikipedia:

In economics, game theory, decision theory, and artificial intelligence, a rational agent is an agent which has clear preferences, models uncertainty via expected values, and always chooses to perform the action that results in the optimal outcome for itself from among all feasible actions. Rational agents are also studied in the fields of cognitive science, ethics, and philosophy, including the philosophy of practical reason.

A rational agent can be anything that makes decisions, typically a person, firm, machine, or software.

Note that “rational” in this context doesn’t mean sane. It doesn’t mean loving or kind or humane.

Sociopaths like Cheney or Maddoff are, in fact, quite rational in the sense that they operate like machines; always seeking the shortest path “that results in the optimal outcome for itself.” This definition in no way excludes stealing from widows and orphans, crushing the economy, or murdering hundreds of thousands of people because those are not logical considerations, merely moral ones.

Sociopaths like Skilling or Scarface see other people as objects, and laws, norms and social taboo as either impediments, or means to reach their ends, or irrelevant.

America did not spend hundreds of millions of dollars arming and supporting this Rational Economic Agent

because he was a nice guy; we propped him up and made him rich as long as his homicidal behavior was benefiting our interests, and then killed him and his family once his homicidal behavior began to be detrimental to those interests.

But the core of him -– a cold-bloodedly rational man acting ruthlessly in his own interests – never changed.

So too our current crop of banksters.

28 years of conservative economic and social dogma created an environment where thousands of cold-bloodedly rational men acting ruthlessly in their own interests were turned completely loose.

They were told their only imperative was to make themselves rich.

By any means necessary.

The rest of us were told that unleashing these cold-bloodedly rational men who acted ruthlessly in their own interests would lead to a new age of prosperity for all. The economy would boom forever. That once the Evil New Deal was finally destroyed, all taxes eliminated, all government smashed and all social safety nets shredded…a New Capitalist Utopia would blossom on the old order’s bones and make life vastly better for everyone forever.

Unfortunately no one bothered to tell the cold-bloodedly rational men who were acting ruthlessly in their own interests that they were supposed to build companies, fuel innovation and make a 1,000 retirement and college tuition funds bloom.

And they didn’t…because they don’t give one, tiny shit about any of that.

Of course, if you’re a Debit Lord instead of a Drug Lord you don’t need to go through the mess of killing everyone that stands in your way. If you’re in the business of flinging around billions instead of bullets, you can simply keep pouring money on Congress, wingnut think tanks, and astroturf activist groups until they rig the game on your behalf.

Purchase enough Senators and Representatives, buy enough time shares in enough Presidential candidates, and eventually – with third-rate intellectuals grabbing every microphone to babble on and on about the virtues of “liberating” the markets, “creative destruction” and Ayn Rand…with Fox News trumpets blaring….and with the pig people cheering right on cue -- they’ll rewrite the rules to make your favorite flavor of usury, theft, or three-card Monte as legal as sea water.

Until, of course, it all falls down.

Until Saddam makes a cold-bloodedly rational decision that ruthlessly invading his neighbor is now in his own interest. Until the banksters make the cold-bloodedly rational decision that kiting trillion-dollar checks against toxic mortgages will make them more money than, say, investing wisely for the long term.

Because fuck the long term. Fuck wisdom.

Until, of course, we wake up one more time to find that the creatures peeing down on us from the commanding heights are not human beings at all.

These are a thousand Blakes (from “Glengarry Glen Ross”)

Blake: That watch cost more than your car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see, pal, that's who I am. And you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you -- go home and play with your kids!!

It does no good to appeal to his conscience: he has none. It does no good to talk to the him about the harm he is doing to society because fuck society.

It’s why they have such tin-ears when it came to collecting huge bonuses to help put out the globe-consuming conflagrations they’re own greed and recklessness ignited.

Fuck conflagrations.

Fuck caution.

Fuck the globe and everyone in it and GIVE ME MY FUCKING MONEY.

These are not people and we will bring ourselves to tears over and over again if we try to treat them as such; these are morally imbecilic automatons, endlessly calculating how to carve out the biggest slice of whatever pie is currently cooling on society’s windowsill.

So don’t go looking for such quaintly human reactions as guilt and remorse from such men; you could talk to them all day and into the night about morality, responsibility and community and all they would hear is this…


Instead understand that they are machines, and, being machines, any social good that comes from the actions of these cold-bloodedly rational creatures will always be purely incidental to the execution of their prime directive: to act ruthlessly in their own interest.

Instead understand that this is a software problem; that the only solution to living with them is to reset their parameters, and that only once we have made a marketplace where it is more profitable to spend years nurturing and strengthening a company or a community or a country or a world than it is clubbing it to death and selling its remains for scrapple can these cold-bloodedly rational men be anything but our mortal enemies.

Or, if you need your message delivered more musically...



UPDATE: Under the tempus fugit heading, the power-posting Rehctaw just passed his first bloggiversary. Go over and wish the lad well; pulling off a full year of posting without going blind or nuts is much harder than it looks!