Profit and loss

[calbert at tiac.net]

Doug:

> What's good for business is good for everybody? Trickle down? A rising
> tide floats all boats?

No, none of the above........It's really very simple, it's about 
AFFORDING OPPORTUNITY to improve one's lot......you cannot 
mandate success and material comfort.....

My late father, an unapologetic reactionary, and successful 
capitalist, was driving a modest four cylinder Taurus with a stick shift 
when he died. Because of HIS efforts and sense of social 
responsibility there are roughly 10-12 students per year, whose 
tuition for one of the most expensive colleges in the nation, are 
subsidized in whole or in part. These students are benefitting from 
the OPPORTUNITY my father's generosity has provided - the kind of 
opportunity which simply is not generated by good intention, but 
rather, by drive and sacrifice.....Just imagine the cumulative effect 
over years of this simple act......

> I don't think you'll find much support for that sort of thinking in
> Pynchon's work.  If you do, I've got a Bridge I'd like to sell you.

While you check your bridge inventory, I'll settle for a direct citation 
from his novels or other writings........

> The right-wing propaganda that floods this forum might easily be
> characterized as "crap ...full
> of angry wind." 

Can you be serious? Jbor a "right winger"? Jane? What the hell are 
the parameters these days.
Funny, I have yet to read anything on this list in the four years that 
I've been here that even tangentially fits the above description (I am 
a 22 year subscriber to the American Spectator - believe me, I know 
right wing crap when I see it). Jane's comment was right on the 
money - this is a list populated, with one exception (this member), 
by EXTREMELY sophisticated minds....ones which will not readily 
yield to "hungwah" on ANY subject.....I urge that such standards not 
be loosened regardless of the topic at hand.

> Which Pynchon novels show how sky-rocketing foreign exchange and
> currency and index and commodities, and all manner of derivatives "
> lead to increases in human happiness?

We will have to wait for a novel written since these issues have 
become so seminal.......In spite of your repeated assurances that it
is so, I have yet to see you provide textual support of the "Pynchon 
as undiscriminating bleeding heart" theory.

> What you do find are story lines and characters and actual historical
> situations that depict capital and corporations profiting from war,
> environmental destruction, alienation.  See GR, M&D, Vineland, V.,
> COL49 for many examples of same.

No, bring us to YOUR "water".......We also see the numbers of dead 
racked up by factors wholy unrelated to "capital and corporations", 
the point being, it seems, that the world really doesn't care, nor does 
it take time to comfort the survivors........

love,
cfa