Greedy, money hungry jerks...

Definition of a greedy, money hungry jerk: One who uses their talents and energy to acquire as much wealth as they can regardless of moral consequences, i.e., lying to others, stealing from others, killing others, taking out life insurance policies on your employees and then not awarding any to the family of the deceased, (Wal-Mart has done this in the past) etc.

In regards to whether liberal speakers should be charging so much to speak at universities, someone left a comment and touched on a few points that I would like to discuss. First is the idea that the market determines these figure's salaries. Of course, if nobody was interested these people, nobody would buy their products and there is no way any of them could charge as much as they do even if they wanted to. Essentially, the idea is that we make things valuable by buying into them, which is true to a large degree. So, if the market(us) determines that Noam Chomsky is worth 15,000 per speech, then it is because Noam Chomsky has a demand such that people will pay that amount money to see him. But of course the average consumer doesn't directly determine such value. Business men determine such value and corporations determine such value, with the help of the consumer. I'm willing to bet that if the people really had a say in it, certain events wouldn't charge as much, but that must be obvious. Nobody wants to pay one hundred dollars to see KISS one last time, but some will because that is what they have to pay to see them.

The one who is doing "the books" is the one who determines monetary value... "Hey, we can charge this much because the people will pay it", not, "Hey, we could charge this much but we don't need to as it will contradict our message and go against what we are trying to educate people about". Surely one shouldn't ask the grocery store clerk to take less pay because the store makes profits. Making profit isn't necessarily the issue. Stopping greedy, money hungry jerks is.

But back to the clerk, there is a moral question here... If Micheal Moore should charge less, then shouldn't the clerk take a lower pay rate? I mean, provided the place he or she works for is making profits. Wouldn't this put just about every occupation into an immoral category because they profit from others? Well, it would seem to be yes, even though they are completely different situations. The clerk likely works where he or she does because they choose to, or because they have to. Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore don't have to charge 15,000 dollars at each event to make a living...they can always choose to do so or not. The clerk can't always just choose to be a prominent figure, though ultimately it would seem that the responsibility lies within our own selves when deciding who we want to be, in most cases anyway.

I would agree that technically one can't avoid being hypocritical when speaking out against a system that they pariticipate in, though one has to consider that some people use such a system as a means to manipulate and cheat others, (see definition of money hungry jerk above) and it wouldn't necessarily be considered hypocritical to speak out against such people while profiting yourself. It would seem that how one goes about profiting would be an issue... does the way so and so runs their business affect others in a negative fashion? Even if the masses create it, even if they chose it, does that make it right? What if they were manipulated into accepting it, manipulated into liking it? Something to be considered... more on this later