Mike Flannagan (not the old Orioles pitcher) is a rising star director/screenwriter in the horror genre. His brilliant and complex mash-up of “The Haunting of Hill House” was as good as any horror movie or series I’ve ever seen, and his two follow-ups, one a re-thinking of “The Turn of the Screw,” are also smart, original and excellent. Now his mash-up of Edgar Alan Poe tales in a modern day horror story evoking the Sackler family and the opioid scandal is on Netflix. As with the previous three, “The Fall of the House of Usher”—the Ushers are the Sacklers— is cast substantially with his “rep company” including E.T.’s Henry Thomas and Annabeth Gish.
Last night I saw the episode in which the Faux Sackler family head and chief villain, played by Bruce Greenwood, gives a spontaneous speech about what smart businesses do when “Life hands them lemons,” and boy, it sure isn’t “make lemonade.” The second I heard it, when I had stopped applauding, I decided that the speech was an instant classic, much cleverer and better than Oliver Stone’s celebrated “Greed is good” speech that he wrote for Michael Douglas in “Wall Street.” It should be appearing soon in business school lectures across the country, and maybe laws schools too. I’m going to use it in an ethics seminar.
Flannagan’s speech for the bitter Usher family head is at once funny, chilling, revealing and true, perfectly encapsulating the ruthless logic of 21st Century capitalism as well as the soul of entrepreneurism.
Ethics Alarms 
Another great “When life gives you lemons…” rant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyLUU3O4zW8
I think of that rant every time I encounter the “when life gives you lemons” quote.
This speech does excellently capture one of the major flaws of capitalism: just like democracy and the scientific establishment, people think they can let the system do all the thinking and make all the choices for them. You leave it alone, and this is what you get.
Part of my endgame is the creation of a world where this sort of revenue model just doesn’t work, where people can’t be manipulated into wanting trivial things just to funnel money to people who don’t do anything constructive for the world, who don’t help people improve themselves in some way. Empathy mindset is a subtle mindset, more powerful than people give it credit for, and I intend everyone to understand it well enough that it cannot be used for great evil anymore.
The proper response to such a scheme is, “Oh, people want us to buy more lemons. I feel no differently about lemons. How about you? Same? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Everyone’s trying to get the thing they own to be the next status symbol, but I don’t play status games. I just take responsibility for doing quality work and I buy quality things that make me happy. Maybe the lemon-pushers should try that.”
I know at least a few Ancient Greek philosophers would back me up on that.
“…I buy quality things that make me happy.”
(Not to mention the experiences, skills, and relationships that are also part of this balanced lifestyle.)
Is this a flaw of capitalism or a flaw in people? This is like blaming the gun for gun violence.
People have a need for affinity or affiliation. Affiliation gives people a sense of security. The sense of isolation drives people to do stupid things. I started smoking at 14 to fit in with a group that accepted me. Gangs exploit the need for security so people with insecurities join gangs. The idea that someone other than the individual knows what will make someone the happiest is a fiction.
The problem with capitalism is that perfect information does not exist. However, the lack of perfect information should be why people should question what they are being sold. Many are being sold the notion that socialism is a better economic system yet few realize that despite its imperfect nature capitalism has raised the quality of life, elevated more people out of poverty than any other economic system.
Both socialism and capitalism do not advertise the darker issues in these systems but you do not need government to make economic choices for you with capitalism nor has capitalism caused governments to kill dissenters.
You raise a good point. I amend my opening phrase to “This speech does excellently capture one of the major problems with humanity’s relationship with capitalism…” I’m not suggesting that we get rid of capitalism, only that we take responsibility for keeping corporations from using their power to warp society to funnel more money into themselves without actually doing anything constructive.
I do want to comment on this point, though: “…nor has capitalism caused governments to kill dissenters.” I’m not entirely sure that’s true, but even if it is, I don’t think it’s saying much. If McCarthyism wasn’t violent, it stopped just short of violence while attempting to ruin people’s lives, and violent agents of capitalism like the Pinkerton detectives need not be affiliated with the government.
I appreciate your reply
Corporations cannot wield warped power without consumers allowing them to do so. Consumers alone have the power to control the behavior of corporations by not engaging in transactions with them. Far too often consumers abdicate their role for consumptive expediency.
What I meant by capitalism does not kill its dissenters I was referring to Mao, Stalin, Lenin, et al who initiated policies that resulted in millions of deaths within their own populations. If we want to point to war deaths then the appropriate comparison would be Democracies versus Dictatorships.
As for Pinkerton agents, I suggest you are conflating unscrupulous acts by some railroad magnates with the tenets of capitalism. There is no doubt that some business executives behave badly. In those cases we have enacted laws to prevent the worst in human nature which is unbridled self interest. This is not the same as rational self interest which undergirds the market system.
There is no argument from me that Joseph McCarthy abused his power in Congress. However, his issue was political communism and not economic. I see an ocean of difference between the two. Unfortunately, the idealism of some utopian social/economic system requires a very heavy handed approach by government that most feel intolerable. Those pushing for a socialist state do allow the masses to consider how maintaining such a system will be done.
When the state begins telling the idealist where they can live what education they can have, what occupation must they perform and when and where they can travel it is too late to opt out. Why are so many POC’s fleeing the utopian socialist states and seeking asylum here in the “systemically racist” United States?
Political communism is a means where the connected few make the rules for all others and belong to the elite group of “haves”. Not everyone is eligible to join that group and any attempt to push one’s own elevation in the social order is often met with a violent disappearance. Socialism is merely one step on the path to communism.
I’d say that using the Pinkerton agents as proof that capitalism results in violence is similar to arguing that freedom results in violence.
Unchecked capitalism has negative externalities; the most obvious one being monopolies and the violence that those can cause. The Pinkertons were ostensibly a reaction to labor monopolies and provide a good example why the government should both have a monopoly on violence and prevent other monopolies from forming.
I agree with Chris about the corporation’s power over people but would go farther in arguing against EC’s point. EC seems to be arguing that corporations shouldn’t be allowed to persuade people into buying something that doesn’t provide value (defined as “constructive” by EC). Of course, you run into the problem of defining value (or what “constructive” is) and determining for someone else what they should value.
If I start a company that provides high-end handbags that double as works of art, should I be prevented from trying to persuade people to pay me large amounts of money for those handbags? Cheaper options exist. Some people value prestige and status. Who gets to determine where the line of acceptability is? The only system that will work to maximize human happiness is to allow people to make their own choices.
Your point is spot on. I was trying to make the same point when I said the belief that a third party can determine what makes another happiest is a fiction.
Utility, happiness, satisfaction or whatever other term used to count value is subjective. Some ethereal goods (affiliation or affinity) have values that are both hard to quantify as well as hard to justify.
How does one measure the value of choosing to ignore some atrocity because not ignoring it and challenging it will result in being ostracized from the preferred group. If any affiliation with the non preferred group is out of the question, the individual may sacrifice the value of being honest with the events at hand. This is why talking heads on TV and typists with bylines will demonstrate their biases or acknowledge being compromised by the demands of their employers.
Value is in the eye of the beholder and bad decisions based on my assessment of value are made routinely by others. The only time it becomes a problem is when the decisions or choices of other create negative externalities for the rest of us. Freedom to choose has some costs but the benefits are substantially greater.
I didn’t bring up Pinkerton agents to assert that capitalism always leads to violence; that would be stupid. I brought them up as a counterexample to the argument that capitalism never leads to institutionalized violence. (Technically the argument was that capitalism never leads to government violence, but I felt that overlooking privately sponsored violence was cheating, in the vein of “I never punched him with my left hand. To the one getting beaten up, I doubt it matters whether the the person who hired the thugs was elected or not.)
I also never said that it should be illegal for companies to try and get people to want what they’re selling. The law should not deal with such things. I would recommend a consumer culture that teaches people, “It’s alright for a company to tell you that their product is desirable and will enhance your life. Once they start trying to tell you that your life is intolerable without their product, or that people without their product are contemptible, turn that contempt back on the company.”
That’s one of the ethical lines that the lemon speech crosses, along with creating an artificial scarcity of lemons and deliberately cross-pollinating crops so they can sue farmers. We can’t make spreading contempt illegal, but we can maintain a culture that is immune to it.
I think we’re more or less in agreement, but I can’t tell if you see it the same way.
Some of the consumptive expediency comes from not being able to afford products from companies with more principle and nuance, and some of that comes from companies not paying people enough because consumers will tolerate their business practices, so there’s a bit of a vicious cycle that we need to break.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove about the ethics of capitalism. Capitalism is a great way to manage scarcity, but it doesn’t have any constructive principles like ethics unless we bring them in ourselves. I guess what I’m trying to say is that no paradigm will work without people taking responsibility for implementing the constructive principles and punishing destructive behavior (through consumer and employee behavior when laws are unsuitable for this purpose), and yet people expect capitalism to fare just fine on its own. This lemon speech is what that looks like.
Sociopathy isn’t the tenets of capitalism. It’s just where it tends to head when nobody’s actively steering it in a healthy direction. In this respect, capitalism is no different from anything else. People already see that, but it’s easier to talk about it with the right soundbites.
The market system is much more robust and prosperous overall than communism. It does work excellently with rational self-interest, but we don’t currently have a system for instilling people with rationality. That’s where I come in.
He’s not wrong. And he also explained in so many words why the diamond industry is the way it is. I for one have never owned a diamond or bought a diamond, and I’m quite content to let my mother’s ring with three relatively large diamonds on it passed to my niece if and when someone asks her to be his wife, so that he does not need to spend some huge amount of money because even in this modern world women still insist on being bought and scream over a shiny trinket like they never grew beyond middle school.
Engineered scarcity is hardly limited to diamonds and people scrambling for the scarce items is hardly limited to women. Just look at video game consoles. The PlayStation 5 was intentionally kept in extremely short supply for years. The black market scalping of PlayStation 5s selling for double or triple their purchase price was a mainstay on EBay for years. People want what they can’t get.
NP.
I believe that people want what few can acquire in order to join an elite group of the “haves”.
I have stated that the need for affinity or affiliation is a driver of behavior. That behavior then has compels the individual to choose among groups the individual believes will differentiate themselves socially. Whether we are talking about stoners and nerds or those who buy generic goods versus high priced branded goods the behavior is the same.
I would suggest that despite our vast ability to communicate in an instant we as a society often fail to feel connected to others. Social media in many respects is an opiate that creates an illusion of connectedness. Social media facilitates, if not puts on steroids, the bandwagon effect that differs little from Keynesian animal spirits that cause people to act as lemmings economically. This is why I said is the problem central to capitalism or some flaw in human nature that allows the need for affiliation to override critical thinking. It is this flaw that causes people to want likes for their posts or retweets. In a sense, those actions validate the person causing a release of endorphins which is no different than Pavlov’s bell.
Contrived scarcity can be a method to price discriminate but in the case of PlayStations I don’t think the manufacturer is the beneficiary of the black market sales. This is more an arbitrage issue where some buyers buy at MSRP and then sell higher than the suggested retail price because of known buyers who are willing to pay a higher than equilibrium price for the satisfaction of being part of the elite group that had such a popular toy. It is possible that PlayStation limited production to drive price levels higher but until they produce and sell more units at the higher market clearing price they have simply limited sales by restricting output.
Everyone has a deep mostly unrecognized desire to feel special/unique, and that is a primary reason why socialism does not work and never will.
We could also talk about Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, in which some cards, like one called the Black Lotus, were so scarce that they were commanding thousands of dollars (In that case almost $14K) and offered as prizes at tournaments. $14,000, maybe more at auction, for a playing card with zero intrinsic value.
As a collector of 54mm figures I can personally attest to artificial scarcity and the desire of collectors to possess what is hard to get. Production runs end, molds get trashed so there can be no more of this or that, particular artists whose painting is considered desirable retire or die. A figure of a Russian knight with a religious flag that sold for $250 as a “prestige” figure in 1996 now goes for ten times that and more at auction, because the designer and the painter are both long gone and the mold is history. Even some of the glossy “toy style” figures command more than their original sale price because the companies that made them have gone out of business and there can be no more.
As long as people have the desire to possess scarce things, there will always be this issue.
Years ago, I watched a special about the opioid crisis (when it was just beginning). What struck me was how little accountability the physicians took for the crisis. They are writing the prescriptions. The main physician interviewed said something like “I don’t know how she became addicted. I prescribed her the recommended dosage and she was only on it for 28 months before she became addicted”. At the time, I thought he was a brazen liar. How could you get a medical license without knowing opioids are addictive? Well, I have met a lot of physicians since then and I can tell you, most physicians learn very little in medical school. They memorize a lot, but learn very little. Physicians tend to do what they are told, no matter how nonsensical it is. Hence, this speech. That approach would work fantastically with physicians.
Since then, I have noticed the lack of accountability throughout the opioid crisis. Instead, they put the blame on pharmacists. They want pharmacists to refuse to fill valid prescriptions for any reason they want. This was a dangerous precedent and we saw it during COVID with pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for several drugs because Trump mentioned them (even if the person had a prescription for a non-COVID use or had been taking it long-term). Several pharmacies in my area were closed by the government for too many opioid prescriptions, but I don’t recall any physicians losing their licenses.
What about the addicts? Don’t people ever think, “Hey, I’m taking this highly regulated narcotic. It seems to be changing my behavior. Maybe I should back off.” It’s like people dying from “accidental” heroin overdoses. (Where the hell did that term come from? Is there such a thing as an intentional heroin overdose?”) Who in their right mind takes heroin? Who doesn’t know it’s highly addictive? Same with fentanyl. Aren’t there any alarms ringing inside these people’s heads? Once the surgical pain is gone, stop with the drugs! Post op patients used to be treated with morphine. Did everyone become morphine addicts? No.
Yes, I often wonder that. I really feel bad for people with chronic pain. There really is not good option. They could take aspirin, and develop ulcers. They could take Tylenol, and damage their liver. They could take Ibuprofen, and get ulcers or kidney damage. This is why people are put on opioids, and they are all addictive. The approach has been to make the opioid more powerful, so less is needed, with the thought that a more powerful opioid will be less addictive because of the lower dosage.
Why don’t we have more research on longterm pain management?
Because as yet it’s not as profitable?
I am afraid it either would be really difficult to do or it is not possible. If you could do it easily, it would be a killer patent, with a vast, vast base of customers. Any company that could do it would make a fortune. The fact that no one has makes me worry it can’t be done. I suspect that I am allergic to opioids, so I am worried if I ever develop longterm pain or need serious pain relief, I will be in trouble.
I can think of a few physicians who were forced to retire from the practice for overprescribing opioids on top of opioids, to the point where they no longer helped, but most of them were already wealthy and ready to retire anyway. None of them got locked up.
This is a bit of a tangent but it’s relevant.
That video reminded me of a marketing narrative that I ran into just this past weekend. Marketing the right narrative to the right audience can be quite lucrative.
My wife and I just planned a three week vacation for 2024 to go see some National Parks that we haven’t seen yet. We’ve create large coffee table photo books from some of the scenery photos I take on vacations and I haven’t been too pleased with the quality of some of the two-page full spread photos but the photos printed smaller are great. Most people probably wouldn’t notice the details I notice in the printed form but with my years of film photography and dark room experience some of the fine details really irritate me. The level of digital quality I’ve been using in the last 15 years is just short of what I would consider completely acceptable for the books we create but it was standard fare 15 years ago and it worked great until we started making these books in the last 8-10 years. Also, I personally don’t like cell phone cameras for anything that is going to be viewed outside of a cell phone or printed on anything larger than a 4×6 print and my nearly 15 year old Cannon digital camera is on its last legs (it’s been well used), so I went in search of a replacement camera. What I needed was a camera with at least 50% better resolution, a better quality lens that will let in a bit more light, a lens with a lower f stop for better depth of field, and a lens with a little more zoom flexibility, all these things will help to get the photos up to the printing quality that I would consider completely acceptable for our large coffee table books.
Also, I figured this new camera will be the camera that I’m going to use through retirement and I’m going to get something that will fit my needs and last a while so I started my search with higher end digital SLR’s because that’s where my overall experience level is and to be real honest I’ve been drooling at the new Nikon and Sony Mirrorless cameras for years. I checked out the websites and oh boy did I like what I saw!!! I was convinced that a mirrorless camera was exactly the step up I needed to take me into the future and what I saw ignited the pot of fuel under an old professional photography flame that I had some years ago, I could finally put all that photography and dark room experience to good use. I was sold a narrative.
I compared the cameras, watched hours and hours of reviews, watched hours and hours of videos actually using the cameras I was looking at. Looked at absolutely all the spec’s and all of the lenses that were available. Hot damn, this was the fountain of youth and I found it two months before I retire! That nagging question of what to do after retirement was answered. I was ready to withdrawal enough from my IRA to cover the cost and I’d be on my way to sitting in a booth at art fairs selling my scenery and wildlife photos. I’ve got some really good ones that I’ll have to reshoot for much larger prints now. Yup, I was drooling and I was sold.
I was the target audience and I was sold on a narrative, I was ready and willing to leap onto the moving bandwagon.
Then I did what I had taught myself to do. I learned over the years how to prevent myself from being an impulse buyer. I knew to stop, think, remember that I’m not in a hurry, this is not an emergency purchase, reevaluate everything, and take my time.
I started looking into the details of my new retirement activity plan. I needed to know what’s needed to set up an art fair booth, all the costs for setting up a booth, what I’m going to need for a vehicle to haul around all my stuff from art fair to art fair, where art fairs are located, how much time away from home, hotel costs, cost of a new website, ecommerce nightmares, MPG of vehicles, insurance, food cost, taxes, etc, etc. I had quite a spreadsheet. Then I remembered something I had forgotten about. I remembered sitting in a booth at trade shows for work over the last thirty years and how much I hated that, hated the setup, hated the large crowds, hated the tear downs, hated being away from home, hated hotels, hated eating out all the time, etc.
A great big light bulb was lit and I had an “aha” moment!
Wait a minute, what I initially started off “needing” was a camera with “at least 50% better resolution, a better quality lens that will let in a bit more light, a lens with a lower f stop to better control depth of field, and a lens with a little more zoom flexibility”. Did the cameras I was looking at meet those needs, yes they did but the 4-5 times increase resolution and massive lens versatility came at a cost, a significant cost. Was there a better more economical way to meet my original needs right now and not go off on a tangent; the answer is yes. If I figured out later that I “needed” the other camera equipment to shoot much higher resolution photos to sell on the open market then I can cross that bridge when I come to it.
I restated my goals, focused on those goals, started my search again with those goals in mind and I ended up spending 21 times less than the mirrorless cameras I was drooling over and I was able to met or exceed absolutely every goal I started with and kept the cost down to only a few hundred dollars by purchasing older, time tested, reliable technology with a few feature upgrades from what I’ve been using.
An advertising narrative nearly sucked me in and dragged me well beyond what I really needed. If I hadn’t initially identified my actual needs up front and had a process in place to prevent impulse buying this could have turned out completely different.
Manipulating propaganda narratives can come in all shapes and sizes. The moral of the story is don’t be sucked into narratives no matter where it comes from. Stop and seriously think critically about what’s being presented to you before you leap onto the moving bandwagon.
When you started this, I was thinking about the Pentax camera with the image stabilization in the camera body, so you can buy older lenses on it and still get the image stabilization.
Image stabilization is nice sometimes but I’ve been doing this since the early 1970’s and I know how to do things without it so it’s not a selling point for me. I’m stable enough to shoot the balls off a squirrel that’s meandering on top of the goalpost at the other end of a football field. Improvise, adapt, overcome. 😉
“I’m stable enough to shoot the balls off a squirrel that’s meandering on top of the goalpost at the other end of a football field.”
How you are with dastardly ChippaMunkas? Their…um…targets are smaller but they’re closer range; maybe we can do business…
PWS
Probably not a good idea to control those varmints with things that shoot any kind of projectile in the area where you live, would probably get arrested.
Bingo
Don’t let advertisers determine your needs.
I was only as far as thinking of upgrading from my D5600 to a 7200, which wouldn’t be that big of a leap. I’ve had the 5600 since 2019, and next year I’ll have been shooting with it for 4 years, at which time I usually think about upgrading. I was just looking for one that has better image quality at slower speed, because I shoot a lot of aircraft, and have to lower the shutter speed to avoid prop freeze, which can make it hard to shoot where both modern and vintage aircraft fly together. I stand humbled, there’s always someone who knows a lot more.
Steve-O-in-NJ wrote, “…there’s always someone who knows a lot more.”
Ditto that.
I’m not home right now so I just downloaded this from my Facebook photos.
Here is a chipmunk shot that was one out of a couple of hundred photos I shot of that little varmint on Crystal Mountain, Washington. I got it to pose for me while it was waiting on a treat that was being held to my left. This is a compressed version that I posted to Facebook where it washed out some giving some really annoying hot spots on the rocks.
In my opinion, if you print that one on a two page spread, which is notably larger than an 8 X 10, the details don’t look very good but if you print it at about 65% of that size which comes out to be somewhere around half a page it looks acceptable, you don’t expect to see those little details at that size. My goal is to be able to take a shot similar to that and fully expect it to meet my detail standards for a two page spread.
Get the general idea?
Also, I wanted more detail for an iconic view like this one of Mt. Rainier, Washington.
BTW, what’s the etiquette in a crowded situation if you bonk someone with one of those long lenses? I only ask because I almost assaulted someone once for bonking me twice and telling me to move if I didn’t like it when I was there first. However, I decided I’d rather shoot the rest of the show than try to kick this guy’s ass in front of about 4 levels of law enforcement.
If someone bonks you more than once with their lens then they’re being an asshole and you should simply push their lens out of the way when it gets in your sphere. If they don’t like it and continue bonking you then take the next step(s).
Hey, how ’bout a nice Hawaiian punch?
LOL!!!!!!!
SUUUUUUURE!
👊💥
This and another post almost has me ready to rant about what I’d consider not really free market capitalism. But a perverted type of capitalism that’s more like state protected corporatism.
A sort of semi-fascism.
And I’ll tell you it’s no good. And it’s a great way for communist filth to trash capitalism and promote itself as a good alternative.