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How is it that our economy is based upon the cannibalistic, bizarro philosophy of Rape and Pillage Economics?

". . . What did I learn as a kid on Western? Don't sell a guy one car. Sell him five cars over fifteen years." Said by "Moss" in DavidMamet's film (and play) Glengarry, Glen Ross.

I understand that self-preservation is one of human beings' strongest, most deeply rooted instincts; hard-wired into the reptilian brain, its chair and foot stool are right next to our need for sex and lust for shopping.

When Moses led the Israelites into the desert, and there dwelt for forty years (Moses was about as poor a geographer as Christopher Columbus), "God" provided something called "manna" for them to eat. Although it was some kind of disgusting insect larvae, it was nicknamed "the bread of heaven," and God love the Israelites, they were able to eat it and stay alive. The thing about manna is that it arrived each morning after the dew had evaporated (according to the only source of truth, Wikipedia) and could not be stored. You gathered enough for the day, anything more than that went bad. Of course, people being people, some tried to gather up a pile of manna and keep it - and who could blame them? - but the result was like saving a McDonald's hamburger over the weekend for Monday's lunch: you're left with an inedible mess.

My point? Tied to our instinct for self-preservation is a niggling sense to sometimes gather up more than we need. And why not? Life's hard. You find food in the desert, you don't just eat a handful right there and move on - you gather up what you can carry and take it with you. I never viewed the people who sought to store manna as anything other than pragmatic.

Now we get to corporate executives, our titans of industry - that strange, vampiric breed of ambulatory biped whose reptilian brain is wired to believe the money in my pocket is his own, that the food in your fridge is for his consumption, and that there's really nothing wrong with sucking the marrow from our skulls in the form of governmental bailouts. These are the rapers and pillagers. To my mind, they are economic terrorists. All things being fair, these jackals would be clad in orange jumpsuits, have black pillow cases placed over their heads, and reside in chain-link cells on a communist island.

All right, taxpayer fantasies of vengeance aside, I'm baffled by the way business is conducted in North America. We ship every possible job to China and India and wonder why nobody's got any money to buy stuff. The Wall Street wizards who lost something on the order of $30 billion are given more than $19 billion in bonuses. And then you've got the delusional masses buying McMansions on $20,000/year wages and Bernie Madoff peeling friends, family, neighbors and strangers like oranges. And he's walking around, free as Pontius Pilate.

And now the manna from the federal government is flowing, with more on the way. The greedy will scoop up all they can. In this case, the only thing that will rot in a day or two are their souls. And we'll slowly piece this economy back together only to take a flame-thrower to it again in a few years.

"Greed is good," sings the slavering, vampiric reptilian brain.

Learn more about this author, Matt St. Amand.
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