Miscellaneous Rambling
I spent Friday in Grand Rapids, attending the annual Business Law Institute. It wasn't highly profitable. I learned a few things, but for the most part, the topics were either too basic or too off-beat. They did, however, bring in two attorneys who have been working on the Detroit bankruptcy. That was pretty interesting. I knew Detroit had been grossly mismanaged, but the things these guys revealed were truly shocking. It's almost as though all public employees, from mayor down to the lowest janitor, just raped the public purse consistently and repeatedly over the past 40 years. I'm sure there were quite a few innocent civil servants (GKC: "a civil servant is neither"), but it looks like all of them to some extent benefited from the pillaging culture that prevailed. * * * * * * * Seen at Reddit this past weekend: "TIL that the CEO of Japan Airlines makes $90,000 a year, less than the pilots, when interviewed about this he said 'We in Japan learned during the bubble economy that businesses who pursue money first fail. The business world has lost sight of this basic tenet of business ethics.'" Amen to that. It reminds me of entrepreneur monks this TDE blog post. Excerpt: "Paradoxically, it is in your own self-interest to forget your self-interest." * * * * * * * I've started advertising my law practice with the National Catholic Register. While searching for my ad this last weekend, I found this piece that I published with them seven years ago. I'd forgotten all about it, but I (narcissistically, I suppose) enjoyed it. Excerpt:
Every person should understand a fundamental truth: Something will always occupy our attention. The only two questions are: What will occupy it – and will you have anything to say about what occupies it?
We can go through our days mentally aimless, letting our mind wander “where it will go,” as the Beatles sang during their psychedelic phase. As if desolate daydreaming were an unreservedly good thing.
A kind of “thralldom” is what the economist-turned-philosopher E.F. Schumacher called it, spending our days “captivated by this or that,” drifting, carrying out “programs that have been lodged in our machine.”
