I just read an interesting piece over at the National Review about selfishness, and how people seem to dislike monetary selfishness, but don't recognize political selfishness.
While I think many of the points made by Mr. Williamson are good and his analysis of the Obamassiah is essentially accurate, I think he misses a vital point, or two.
Monetary selfishness as applied to the individual - the only real candidate for the title - is perhaps unseemly in the extreme cases but unless it leads to crime, is not really harmful to society. It's a personal problem, like halitosis. If you don't like them - don't deal with them. Eventually they die - problem solved.
Monetary selfishness as applied to the corporation is inappropriate, the whole point of corporation is money. It's the reason they exist. To consider the act of a corporation seeking a profit as selfish is just stupid. Corporations have other problems, like people thinking a non-existent entity can have ethics - people have ethics, not governments, not corporations. The more you allow the people to distance them selves from their actions within the government or the corporation the less ethical they become. They point at the corporation and say - it wasn't me, it was the corporation. As if a legal fiction written on a piece of paper had a will of it's own. Yet, again - if you don't like them, don't deal with them - vote with your pocketbook. If enough people vote NO with their pocket book, the corporation crumbles and dies. Problem solved (which is not to say the same problem won't show it's self in other places.)
Selfishness as applied to politics, and power (perhaps redundant) is much, much worse. Here we have selfishness with out constraint. The use of coercion to achieve gains in power. Everything done by politicians and governments is done at the point of a gun. Every law they pass is another excuse to point a gun at you and claim the right to kill you if you don't do what they want. When a politician who has taken power from the people and given it to the state dies, the problem is not solved. The State retains that power, voting it back to the people is next to impossible and has only been accomplished a few times at best, and generally it's lost again anyway.
No, Political selfishness is definitely the worst of the breed, and sadly the most common.
