I was trying to think of a clever title, a good way to draw readers in with a cute little pun or some sort of metaphor, and to be honest, I just couldn't this time around.
We've seen the devastating widespread effects of unchecked greed on a large scale over this past year, with the notion of faceless bankers creating and destroying wealth and countless masses of people losing jobs and losing their savings.
I've finally seen the effects of this, up-close and personal, and it's been jaw-dropping, horrifying, and enlightening all at the same time. The greed of a few caused it all; Ayn Rand famously said altruism was bad. A six foot tall floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar bill was prominently displayed at her funeral. She had a number of prominent people, including Alan Greenspan at her funeral, who had all come to show their gratitude for the fact that she made the notion of naked greed very acceptable.
As her lifeless body decayed and the floral arrangement withered and died, so too did much of her legacy. Alan Greenspan recently conceded that an unregulated market might not completely regulate itself. We've watched the economic inequality continue to grow, amidst a nonstop repetition of Gordon Gekko's famous mantra: "Greed is good."
Fuck greed.
I'd like to post several excerpts of a Press Release that relates closely to my life. You'll see a mention of seventeen companies, one of which is my employer. Names and details will have been changed, but it's otherwise verbatim.
The California Department of Corporations has obtained a Preliminary Injunction granting the Department’s request for an asset freeze and appointment of a receiver against (Defendant A), his associate (Defendant B), and 17 companies they owned or controlled which were alleged to have engaged in securities fraud and diversion of investor funds for personal use.
The Department has filed a civil complaint alleging that (Defendant A) and his companies raised at least $5 million from a number of investors, through fraudulent misrepresentation of investment opportunities. The suit further alleges that companies were established and operated by (Def. A and B) in order to fraudulently obtain client funds and divert them for their personal use. This included personal loans to (Def. A and B) of at least $1.9 million, which they claimed were secured by luxury homes, but which were never repaid. The complaint requests defendants pay restitution to investors and civil monetary penalties to the State.
"Through a series of sham companies, these two men defrauded their investors with misrepresentations about the true nature of their business dealings," said Preston DuFauchard, California Commissioner of Corporations. "Our suit against them and the result today shows the commitment of the Department of Corporations to act swiftly and aggressively against dishonest investment advisers and to protect assets for investors in fraudulent schemes."
-Source
My employer is a start-up website based in San Francisco and over the past year, our team has built a pretty slick website with an interesting concept and loads of replay value. I've been a Web developer my whole professional career, and worked at this site like I have any in the past, from small start-up to those handling millions of users every day: faithfully and diligently.
According to this suit, our company was nothing more than a shell to funnel investment money into personal accounts illegally. While I disagree with this: we absolutely have an excellent product, I do not contest the fact that we're not profitable, but that's a common fact of life for most web start-ups during their first year.
I cannot speak to the veracity of the allegations as, quite frankly, I have no idea if they're correct or not. Their suits seem like they could have some merit. They had enough merit for the court system to issue a restraining order on all involved companies, including my employer, effectively shutting us down. All assets were frozen, including employee payroll, and now the company owes its employees about a month of wages, plus vacation and sick hours.
We had an effective team of developers, designers, and front-end coders, plus a passionate team of editors who were well versed in specific areas. Additionally, we had a couple people in sales and marketing, and the really helpful woman in the office who handled our commuter checks, health care plans, and bringing in an ice-cream cake whenever it was someone's birthday.
In the blink of an eye, all these people, myself included, were effectively out of a job with no advance notice. After that, we were strung along for a few weeks, being told our group was going to be able to file separately at a hearing and have the injunction lifted.
It quickly became clear that this process wasn't going to be resolved any time soon, and we've all been looking for jobs recently. It's gotten desperate for some of us as we all lost our health care and were told we would not be eligible for COBRA.
Worst of all, perhaps, is the thought that if these allegations are true, that we all were used as unwitting pawns as part of a scheme to swindle investors of their millions of dollars which would end up adding just a tad more money to the accounts of people who already had millions of dollars.
I knew Defendant A, at least casually. Nearly every conversation I'd had with him was about how the business was doing, what some investors thought, or even when we all went out for drinks, his approaches to financial management.
Perhaps if our society could at some point put its foot down and say "Greed is a vice," well, maybe this guy might have stopped thinking about money for a few moments and realize that his net-worth is made up more than his financial assets.
Maybe not. But what happened to all of us was the logical extension of Ayn Rand's philosophy: it's all about the mighty dollar, altruism be damned. Don't worry about how the editor right out of college is going to pay his rent or how the guy in marketing expects to find new employment soon or how I can afford monthly asthma medication. Just do everything we can in every waking hour to get a leg up on humanity. Perhaps no one will care or remember us, but if we succeed by Rand's standards, we get put in a box that's more intricately designed and shinier than anyone else's.
And that's what life's all about, right?