"Greed is not the product of one particular economic system, but
something that all economic, political and social systems have to
cope with one way or the other." So asserts economist Thomas
Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman senior fellow on public policy
at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
According to Marxist ideology, "greed" in a capitalist system
would inescapably deliver a lower level of overall well-being --
economically, morally, and politically -- than a collectivized
"people's" system with more elevated and nobler goals than crass
acquisitiveness, unbridled individualism and gross
profit-making.
Instead, as was demonstrated in the Soviet Union and elsewhere,
we saw that "greed" for political power can be more harmful to a
population's overall well-being than the capitalist "greed" an
entrepreneur might have for a larger market share or the "greed" a
worker might have within capitalism for a larger income.
In fact, either system, capitalism or socialism, can be
corrupted and degraded by way of an overall weakening of the ethics
of its general population. And within capitalism, neither the
private sector nor the government sector is structurally inoculated
against immorality and dishonesty if its members are immoral and
dishonest.
As a case in point, recent disclosures about the level of
corruption and fraud related to the relief efforts involving
Hurricane Katrina show a pattern of dishonesty and "greed" among
all sectors, among businesses, government and the general
population.
Some examples cited by the New York Times, illustrate
the wide-ranging nature of the corruption:
* An estimated 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast
collected in excess of $10 million in rental assistance and
disaster-relief money. Crime pays! FEMA, in addition, distributed
millions of tax dollars to people who used names and Social
Security numbers belonging to state and federal prisoners.
* A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Texas, has been charged with
submitting $232,000 in invoices for evacuees who allegedly never
stayed at his hotel, billing FEMA for purportedly empty rooms or
rooms occupied by paying guests or hotel employees.
* An Illinois woman who was living in Illinois at the time of
the storm sought relief benefits by claiming she had watched her
two daughters drown in the flood waters of New Orleans. The
children never existed.
* A Department of Labor employee in Louisiana, appropriately
named Wayne Lawless, has been charged with handing out nearly 100
falsified disaster unemployment benefit cards in exchange for
kickbacks of up to $300 per card.
* In New Orleans, two FEMA officials have pleaded guilty to
pocketing $20,000 in bribes in exchange for inflating the count on
the number of meals a contractor was serving to relief workers.
* With the $2,000 debit cards distributed by FEMA for disaster
relief, an estimated 5,000 people have double dipped, receiving
both the $2,000 plastic card and a second $2,000 by check or
electronically.
* Two men, one a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers,
have pleaded guilty to taking kickbacks in exchange for approving
payments for removal of nonexistent loads of hurricane debris. In
contrast, with loads of debris that were not nonexistent, a
councilman in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, has been charged with
attempting to extort $100,000 from a debris-removal contractor.
* One creative scam artist is charged with collecting 26 federal
disaster relief checks totaling $139,000 by using 13 Social
Security numbers and fake claims of damage at bogus addresses.
Others collected and pocketed hurricane relief donations by posing
as Red Cross workers.
All told, what the above represents is "one of the most
extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying
bureaucratic bungles in modern history," reports the
Times, "costing taxpayers up to $2 billion."
The $2 billion guesstimate might well prove to be just the
proverbial tip of the iceberg. Commenting on the extent of fraud
and waste in FEMA's response to Katrina, Gregory D. Kutz, a
director of audits at the General Accounting Office, stated, "I
still don't think they fully understand the depth of the
problem."
By the time the Katrina accounting is over, it won't be
surprising if the fraud and boondoggles hit $5 billion. The
question: How high does the price of ineptitude and corruption have
to go before we all begin to understand the depth of the
problem?
topics:
Business, Law, Socialism
