Interesting times

While doing my weekend reading, I chanced upon an article called 'The Interesting Times Triangle'. The article posits that if we do indeed, as the old curse grants, 'live in interesting times', most of us are forced to choose at-most two out of three of the following choice set. 1. Make money 2. Make sense, and 3. Make beauty.

To my way of thinking, Apple appears to have managed to do all three. So has Ferrero, a privately held company that makes Ferrero Roche.

It is not difficult to think of examples where, indeed, a number of people or corporations appear to be confounded by the interesting-times curse. Politicians in India seem to be making only money. Penniless artists make only beauty and philosophers in penury perhaps make sense.

Some engineering enterprises make money and beauty; Bang and Olufsen comes to mind. To me personally, a wireless PC / iPod speaker that costs Rs. 200,000 makes no sense at all; but then, I am tone deaf and cannot tell the difference between budget Panasonic speakers and a Bowers and Wilkins set.

Most of us are possibly examples of the Make money + sense brigade, presuming that the products and services we make or market for a living make sense for us and for our customers. I am quite certain that we do not even consider the beauty for the most part. Most engineering, these days seems to be all about, 'Does it work?' and 'Can I push it out the door before the deadline?'

I have to admit that I am still struggling to come up with examples of the last remaining option - making sense and beauty without making money. Clearly, without the money, these entities do not last long and their very ephemeral nature prevents strong examples from coming to mind. The author of the article proposes Intellectual Dictators as examples of the Making beauty + sense set, but if they make sense, why do they have to be dictators?

The part that I am struggling with most is why is this the curse of living in interesting times? What other times are there where most people could get to choose all three?