organization chart 

The Ethics of House Flipping

I have not heard significant criticisms of the practice of house flipping though, to be sure, such criticisms are there to be made. In the first place, house flippers drive up the cost of housing by a significant multiple, especially in areas where the housing boom is in full force. Now, in Los Angeles and the surrounding suburbs, for example, the price of a home is usually no less than 500,000 dollars or so. Ordinary people who subsist on middle class wages cannot afford such homes--or if they are enticed to buy them, they do so using the instrument of the variable rate mortgage. When inflation goes up (which will happen) and when the interest rates go up, middle class and working class people will be stuck with mortgages that they cannot afford and they will be forced to sell the property that they purchased at a possibly deflated value. Unless housing prices continue to grow--and there has to be some limit to the growth here--the middle and working class buyers will be holding "negative equity" and it will be the financial ruin of many, many scores of people. I am of the opinion that the overwhelming debt of our society on all levels--from individuals to the government itself--will bring about a deflation of value in houses and in many other sectors in the escalated, manic markets post stock market crash of 2001. In the second place, one must wonder what moral right house flippers have to making such outrageous profits off of an essential need, viz. 'housing', for which there is very little value invested. I would like to say that if a buying and selling practice itself jeopardizes the fundamental need of individuals to have affordable housing who otherwise are hardworking and contributing members of society, then there can be no moral right to engage in such a practice. And, the activity of "fixing up" a property for the sake of a flip is not, generally speaking, adding an equivalent measure of value to the property. Indeed, it is only for the sake of riding the wave of "comparability" in a housing market that all "fixing up" is done.

My conclusion is that house flipping is an unethical practice of buying and selling akin to usury. Laws which constrain usury can serve as good examples to restrict the practice of house flipping. Some basic guidelines might include limiting buying houses to those people who plan to dwell in them or perhaps limiting the percentage profit that one can make off of buying and selling a house within a one year period, say up to but no higher than 5%.

And lastly, I beg you to consider the kind of people who flip houses. Consider the materialistic, gluttonous selfish whores that they are. Think of them in all of their particularity. And then think of their contribution to your inability to acquire affordable housing.

To Be Retained or To Be Hired?

Executives in corporate culture are said to be "retained" rather than "hired". The thinking behind this is that they are perennial free agents who allow themselves, for an enormous fee, to be temporarily restrained and detained by the tasks given them by the corporation, hence "retained". The thinking must be that without those grotesque sums the corporate executive would just fly off like the statues of Daedalus. He is, after all, not committed to the mission of the company nor its product, nor its public service, but to himself and his peculiar need for enormous compensation packages. The ordinary worker, on the other hand, is merely "hired"and he receives a small wage, market value. The inequality is therefore no mere linguistic phenomena, for the difference between being "retained" and being "hired" has grown increasingly important from the perspective of "compensation". The average executive salary is now over 500 times that of the average employee and this does not include the numerous compensation packages that are loaded on as retainer fees and retaining bonuses, etc. For the latest case of such outrageous inequity, read of the case of Robert Nardelli, 5 year executive of Home Depot, who was awarded 245 million in compensation even while the stock price declined: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/business/24board.html?hp&ex=1148529600&en=a674c85cd979cd3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
These kinds of executive compensation cases are so frequently reported nowadays that one has no choice but to be apathetic lest one become a furious mess. What gets me the most is how these slick, smug liars are able to look at themselves in the mirror and think, "yeah, I deserve it!" You go girl!

Of course, it is the "Board" who decides upon the precise compensation for retaining the executive. But as the NY Times article makes clear, the "Board" is often nothing other than a small group of similarly situated executives who serve on each others "Boards" that decide upon "just" compensation for each other. When one looks upon this Ponzi scheme, run by an elite few at the top, it is hard not to think that capitalism is structurally flawed to the core. A better system, and one which is recommended by socialists of all stripes (such as Pareconomists and Economic Democrats) would turn over the issue of executive compensation to worker councils rather than corporate boards. This system would not work, of course, unless the proletariat became fully class conscious and significantly better educated in the virtues of democratic self-rule. But our corporate culture casts its sickly pall over the entire productive apparatus from education in earliest childhood to end-of-life nursing homes and the expectations of a social safety net. They would never allow true democracy to shape the productive process. After all, the only function of the "good american people" is to be cannon fodder, consumers, and laborers for their corporate executive masters. And that is how it is "supposed to be".

NRA Convention, Milwaukee, WI  

shopping, learning, fraternizing 

Missy with a sixgun 

getting personal with the prey 

Team Glock Racing 

woo-hoo 

Note the possessive "your" 

Tommy Lee Goes To College?

As I was flipping through the channels the other night I came across the reality tv show, "Tommy Lee Goes To College". The premise of the show is that Tommy Lee (44 year old founder and drummer of Motley Crue) takes classes and joins the marching band at the University of Nebraska. The camera follows him through his daily routine which includes a chemistry course in a large lecture hall, some quality time with a very sexy tutor, crazy antics as he establishes his own fraternity (of the "Lee" house), and time spent playing Nintendo. I found myself wincing at every turn in this indecent show. It was not even so much the same bad cliches about college life popularized throughout the 1980's by such films as Animal House, Porky's, Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Revenge of the Nerds as it was the shamefully adolescent behavior of a 44 year old man who appears not to have overcome his unresolved Peter Pan complex. It made me think of Theophrastus Characters , a third century b.c. text of ridiculous personalities. Therein we find the case of the "rejuvenator". I quote the text in full:

"Rejuvenation would seem to be an enthusiasm for work inappropriate to one's age. The rejuvenated man is the sort who, after turning sixty, memorizes passages, but when his is reciting at a drinking party can not remember the lines. From his son he learns "right face" and "left face" and "about face". For the hero-festivals, he contributes to the boys and runs in the relay races. If he is invited to a shrine of Heracles somewhere, you can be sure he will throw his cloak and try to lift the bull to twist its neck. He goes into the wrestling schools and challenges them to a match. At street fairs he sits through three or four shows, trying to learn the songs. When he is being inducted into the cult of sabazios he wants the priest to judge him the most handsome. He becomes infatuated with a prostitute, uses a battering ram on her door and gets a beating from her former lover--then takes him to court. While he is riding on a borrowed horse in the coutry he tries to practice fancy horsemanship at the same time, but falls and hurts his head. Among the members of a monthly club he plans the attendance of his fellow financial sponsors...He competes in archery and the javelin against his children's teacher, and suggests that the teacher take lessons from him. When he wrestles at the baths, he often twists his hips so that he will look well trained. And when women are nearby he practices a chorus-dance, humming to himself." Theophrastus, Characters 28.

To Theophrastus' admirable list of behaviors and characteristics of the rejuvenator, we might inscribe the text of Tommy Lee Goes To College. In one scene, Tommy proudly receives a "B+" on a quiz and promptly meets his tutor at the bar. I have a better scenario, one that will surely put this clown in his place and thus end the cultural tyranny of 80's hair bands once and for all, namely, Tommy gets an 'F' for all of his courses and is forced out of Nebraska tail between his legs.

To Resign or To Be Fired?

One additional inequality (and there are too many to name here) in our society is the manner in which workers from different social strata are terminated. A worker of the lower order is "fired"--that is, he is given a directive to leave, clean out his cubicle, his locker, etc. A worker of the higher order, like an executive, tenders his "resignation" and apparently leaves of his own free will. The difference is not minor. For in the first case, the worker is symbolically castrated by effectively eliminating his subjectivity, his will. He is told to leave like a child and shown the door. In the second case, the worker (i.e., the executive) is encouraged to leave and in leaving retains his subjectivity, his will. It is, after all, his choice to "resign". He retains his penis, his power, even after being forced out. The appearance of propriety is here maintained as though it was all just a misunderstanding amongst gentlemen at a social club. The honor of men is here maintained whereas in the former case the worker is shamed and outcast, like a criminal or a juvenile.

(Note: 6/24/06 a story in the NY Times "The Winding Road to Grasso's Huge Payday", the following quote:

"At a Sept. 17 meeting, the Big Board's directors voted 13 to 7 in favor of Mr. Grasso's resignation. Mr. McCall then said, "Dick, we accept your resignation."
Mr. Grasso responded: "Are you asking for my resignation?"
Taken aback, according to Mr. Langone's description of the meeting, Mr. McCall struggled for the right words, before saying yes.
"Then I resign," Mr. Grasso respond- ed. ")--Feng

NB: 10/20/06: Grasso forced to pay back 100 million of the 250 million:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/business/20nyse.html?hp&ex=1161403200&en=a6f93d391af0c6f5&ei=5094&partner=homepage


Just something I noticed in the climate of resignations of Goss, Brown, etc. Fair? No, of course not. But then again ours is neither a fair nor a just society, after all.