RED ALERT:  EXPLOSION OF GREED IN PROGRESS --- SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED --- COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN.

One of my 2008 New Years resolutions is to remind the world that GREED is the single major cause of grief on the earth.  Let me remind us all that  Capitalism is Powered by Greed.  Greed, like fire, must be carefully controlled to prevent its destroying everything.  Most of the laws are, or were, to control greed.  Lately,  however, BIG MONEY has bought (via campaign contributions, funding attack groups, lobby money, golden parachutes, etc.) its way around many of those greed control laws (anti-trust, usury, high taxes on the rich, prevent media consolidation, etc.).  One method of controlling greed is to continuously increase taxes on the rich (LUXURY TAX on that growing new Royalty) and know that anytime any tax on the rich decreases, the wildfire that is greed has burned through another containment.   RED ALERT click RE-TAX the RICH and Excess Resources Taxes 

Additional factors:

We must remember that the only legal corporate mandate is to make money for the owners (the rich, the shareholders)  If a corporation does some good in the process of making money, it is purely incidental, but we all benefit.  Too often, however, what corporations do in pursuit of their mandate, harms us all.  Even SAFETY has to be imposed and continuously enforced.  Some examples are: (a) importing cheap/slave labor (remember capitalism thrives on slavery, ref. U.S. history) or exporting jobs to cheap/slave labor countries, (b) Buying up and scrapping trolley-car systems nation wide in order to sell more cars and more oil/gasoline, (c) when faced with a mandate to increase fleet mileage, they created and used the "light truck" loophole to produce and promote Personal Trucks (SVU's, etc.) to sell more trucks and more gas (incidentally bringing us Road Rage).  (d) Credit card/banks suckering people in, and then scamming them with outrageous interest rates and profitable gimmicks like the Debit Card.  Then they changed the usury and bankruptcy laws to prevent those trapped from escaping the money sucking clutches of the credit/banking corporations.  (e) Healthcare For Profit !!??  If that's not absurd enough, we allow them to abuse people by denying lifesaving claims that effect their bottom line.  (f) Create diseases like Mad Cow because of their cutting feed costs by feeding cattle ground up dead cattle.  (g) Pollution from pesticides to animal feces to mercury, oil, CO2, etc., etc.  (h) Drug companies knowingly selling expensive dangerous/deadly drugs with inadequate or no warnings, while bribing doctors to prescribe them. (i) The present mortgage swindle.

I could go on, but I think you get the point of private/ public companies making money at the expense of us all ($ and Lives).  It's not even considered as greed.  It's just good business and corporations must grow or else.  Greed is built into the non-democratic structure of corporations.  Their CEOs get millions in bonuses (above their average $11 million/yr salary) for increasing profits at our expense.  Speaking of expense, that is the way corporations view taxes (an expense: a cost of doing business).  Corporations do not Pay Taxes, they Collect Taxes (for the government) by adjusting their prices to cover their costs of doing business as they are legally mandated to do.  Therefore, any taxes (including gas taxes, highway usage fees, and other business related government taxes and/or surcharges, e.g. telephone) are passed on to the customer (ultimately you and me).  (click illegal Taxes) 

What about corporate ethics, you say?  Corporate Ethics is an Oxymoron.  "You know, like" Computer Security is an Oxymoron and corporations are trying for force us to use their computer voting machines --- any good programmer (or mediocre hacker) can write computer voting machine code that would pass all inspections, but on voting day, one of the utility programs will rewrite itself such that it can be programmed for any chosen candidate to win, and by how much, and with a matching false paper trail, then rewrite all code back to that which passed inspection. --- Even if we start with an ethical CEO, the cut-throat (non-democratic) rise to power of executives in his company will eventually replace him with the most ruthless of those seeking his job.  As these "King of the Hill" internal battles/games are repeated annually at all levels, any ethics (other than those mandated by laws that are being rigorously enforced) tend to vanish and "Whistle Blowers" are banished.   Therefore Corporate Ethics is necessarily an oxymoron.  

To show how greed is the cause of most human grief, I point to the corporations that produce WEAPONS and WEAPONS SYSTEMS  (research, manufacturing. PROMOTION and SALES).

Sell powerful weapons to Power Mad Nuts?  Yes, that's what we do.  And too often other Power Mad Nuts are owners of arms companies.  Everyone knows (or should know) the story of "False Flag" operations.  Where a greedy rich person/corporation hires and trains a bunch of criminals and thugs from country A, sends them to country B to commit atrocities (kill people) in the name of country A, in order to start a war,  with the hope of selling arms to both sides (or at least one side).  Then, of course, he can sell arms to the now frightened neighbors of countries A & B.  The owners of weapon manufacturers should be scrutinized more than the owners of casinos.  Casinos only take peoples money, weapons take peoples lives.

Weapons speak to the human psyche --- of their need to be used (tested, retested --- played with like toys).  As a 17 year old in the USAF, I learned that the ownership of a gun lowered the level of insult that I would accept.  Having the power, effects the head.  We have all heard that "Power corrupts and Absolute Power corrupts absolutely".  Money is Power.  Greed is part of the corruption.  Like drugs or alcohol, how much is too much?  When they become a danger to themselves and others?  Like buying up governments and starting wars?  Yes!  When they are driven to that level of corruption/insanity, I call them Power Mad Nuts.  They are those who have been driven mad by their power/money/greed.  (click Is it Greed or Ambition) 

Most major religions teach that  Greed is one of the 7 Deadly sins.  Yet we have the worlds major religions pandering to the rich and powerful: "Whatever MONEY says, we will do" ( to the tune of "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets"...).  The "Religious Right" allied themselves with the greedy rich, cut their taxes and  helped them take over the U.S.  They had republicans voting for the rich (Power Mad Nuts as it turned out) while thinking they were voting against abortion and gay marriage.  They rigged presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 with the help of religious conservatives and no-body went to jail  They are working on rigging the 2008 elections.  All the while the "religious right" is touting a growing immorality of this country.  Unfortunately the only immorality they are talking about is sexual.  What could be more immoral than rigging elections ("their god says cheating is OK as long as they win")?  Alliance with the Greedy could be the most immoral thing the "Religious Right" has done since they supported slavery in the U.S.  Although bringing this country down to the level of starting wars, torturing prisoners and making us a country where people disappear, could be considered more immoral.  It is definitely criminal, but again, no-one went to jail.  (Click On Morality) 

Ref. Freedom, Democracy and Capitalism - a 6 way TUG OF WAR