Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Contemplating the funding of good times

There is perhaps something endearing about people like Bill Gates who worked hard to build a product that people were willing to buy, and then took the decision to use the power of that empire for the benefit of people less privileged.

On the other hand, we have the case of a certain large man who celebrated his birthday in style at a beach location a few days ago. While a birthday might be cause for celebration, one wonders about the code of ethics of hedonists who continue to party hard when they are in non-trivial debt; owing a ridiculously large sum of money, not only to banks but also to smaller vendors who have perhaps lost their life savings and gotten into debt to provide services to the Mr. Large's many shenanigans.

Clearly, there are people who have no qualms about first selling the family silver and later borrowing money to fund their lavish lifestyle, presumably with no intention of ever repaying. This in itself would not be so abhorrent if the lenders were all well-to-do aristocrats with abilities to write-off large amounts. It does hurt when the party is funded by the salaries of clerks and peons and folks in administrative jobs who worked for a few months without being paid their salaries while Mr. Large flew his private jet to his private yacht in Monaco to participate in a sporting event involving private parties with private escorts.

It speaks volumes of our law and order system that people can get away with spending other people's money with impunity.

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