Advice to Young People Seeking a Life of Crime

Advice to young people considering a life in crime: Stay in school, get an MBA, and work your way up to the executive suite; that's where the real possibilities lie. Every day. the business section of the newspaper looks more and more like the police blotter. Big bucks ripoffs. Take a random Business Day, New York Times, March 5.

1. The CEO of Choice Point is alleged to have cashed in about $13 million in stocks in advance of announcing bad news that eventually led the stock to lose more than 30 per cent of value.

2. Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, contends that Aon "routinely steered customers to the highest-bidding insurers, even though it had been paid by those customers to provide unbiased advice in arranging the best coverage at the lowest prices."

The Choice Point deal is under investigation; Aon is coughing up $190 million to settle." So crime is crime, whether it's selling dope on the street or swindling consumers from the executive suite. You can get got.

My real advice: Go straight. Get your eyes off yourself. Focus on a contributions you can make- in the arts, science, medicine, law, and even business-toward creating a better world. However, if you insist on the criminal life, then head for the executive suite; that's where the big money is. If you're caught, you may have to pay a huge fine or even spend some time in one of our comfier penal institutions, but you are less likely to get killed. That's another big perk.

All of this is intended to shed further light on amebocytes and slugs (See my entry, "Amebocytesand Slugs: The Key to Almost Everything.") Amebocyte ideologues rail against Slug regulation." Just turn us loose to freely compete; unrestrained amebocyte systems will produce better products and services at lower prices." Unrestrained amebocyte systems can do all of that, and they can also lead to greed and corruption. The culture of amebocyte systems stresses responsibility for self; it's about me. The culture of slug systems emphasizes mutual responsibility; it's about us.

John Kenneth Galbraith has said,

"Under capitalism (unrestrained amebocyte systems) man exploits man. Under communism (unrestrained slug systems), it's just the opposite."

He has also said,

"The modern conservative (champion of unrestrained amebocyte systems) is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

"Despite what the ideologues of either stripe maintain, healthy systems are those that balance amebocyte and slug, individuation and integration.