Is enough enough?

Listening to the scandal about SNC Lavalin and bribery on CBCF this morning reminded me of the old story about the Spartan boy and the stolen kit. The boy let the fox he had stolen for lunch and hidden under his garment claw out his guts rather than be caught for theft. Perhaps, then, Lavalin’s crime is not the bribery itself but rather the clumsiness in getting caught doing it.  And so the company will be punished, perhaps even with death.

It is not so radical to suggest that getting caught is capitalism’s greatest crime, at least according to its practices.  Countries all over the world are suffering collapsing economies because capitalism will not accept responsibility for the greed driven errors that caused incipient bankruptcy to financial institutions everywhere.  Rather than suffer the ignominy of being caught, the creators of the crisis have laid the blame on populations of countries with horrendous sovereign debt.  In the case of the Greeks, we were told to blame a culture of entitlement amongst people to lazy to work for their living.  (Few cared that Greeks had the longest average workweek of any capitalist work force.)  Then there were the PIGS countries, also no doubt the victims of lazy people.  Now France is in recession again.  England is crushing the working class with severe austerity.  I guess they are a bunch of bums with their hands out for the dole.

The Russians are besotted with vodka, so they don’t count.  The numberless Chinese will soon choke in their own pollution.  Or so we seem to think.  Thank God for the good old USA, where capitalism reigns supreme and all is well . . . or not.  Unemployment is high, and new jobs are in the low-paying service sector.  Manufacturing, except in armaments, continues to decline, exported elsewhere to low-wage regimes.  It seems that the focus on economic growth has once again proven to be chimerical, pie in the sky, as it were.

  Now may be the time for economies of enough.  The economies of more have indeed led to more—more misery for more people.  Perhaps at last will wonder about just where that “lost” money has gone.  Could it be hidden in the numbered accounts of the people who control the IMF and the World Bank?  The taxman calls that “Capital Gain,” but because it is hidden, there is no way that he can claim a share for the general good.  Still, we may not yet be miserable enough to complain about our lot.  Like Edgar in King Lear, we may think, “The worst is not/ So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’”