Biased darwinism...

       I remember reading an NYT article titled Wall Street Smarts in which an obviously wise man, not a so-called financial pundit, was talking about why the 2008 financial collapse happened. If you haven't read it (and don't want to click through because you are as lazy as I am), here's the summary. So, the financial meltdown happened because "smart guys" started working on Wall Street. Yes, you read it correctly. My compiler didn't respond the first time either, but, then, I decided to read on. And I did. So, the question is: how's being smart detrimental to an industry? And also: weren't smart guys already working for Wall Street? Well, read on.
       So the wise guy answers: NO! Both letters capitalized, as you might have noticed. So, what used to happen was that the real smart guys didn't use to go work at the Wall Street. They used to do-guess what-research and teaching. In the best of the best Ivy League business schools. Then who worked for Wall Street behemoths? The lesser guys. The second graders. They got jobs in investment banks and all and many opened their own financial firms. And they did a good job. And earned a lot of money. And bought beach-houses. And private jets. And yachts. Man, helluva good life they were living.
       Then the smart guys came into picture. They saw their second-graders enjoying their lives in their beach-houses and yachts and all. Hell, they could do much better and earn far more money because, well, they were the smart guys. And they did. They came to work there, for the behemoths and for the smaller firms founded by their well-known second graders. And they did do a better job. You know why? Yes, you do. They were the smart guys. And then they bought beach-houses. And private jets. And yachts. And man, helluva good life they were living.
       So, what then? Well, they were the smart guys. They could do better then the second-graders. And, here's the beginning of the meltdown, they became greedy. One beach-house isn't enough. Is it?! One yacht isn't enough. Is it?! Hell, no. So, they, the smart guys, conceived the most complex financial instruments possible. Derivatives. Didn't the second graders object? How could they? The instruments were conceived by the smart guys. And they knew how smart the smart guys were. And they did an awesome job. Not just of earning boatloads of money and purchasing ever more beach-houses and yachts, but, also of increasing the complexity of already complex financial instruments. And they killed us. They killed us all. They took other people's money and invested it in financial instruments so complex they ultimately they didn't understand them themselves.
       Meanwhile, a (supposedly) wise man devised the central bank monetary policy in such a way that more and more people got access to dirt-cheap credit from banks with no regards given to their ability to pay back. Hell, they could get loans to repay loans. Sounds like heaven, isn't it?! And the economy grew. And grew like anything. For decades. Ballooned. The American Dream was finally coming true. Everyone happy. Everyone having homes. And second homes. So what if they were over-leveraged?! So what if the savings were zero and the credit-card debts were ballooning too?!
       And the bubble burst! And here we are. Thousands upon thousands without jobs. Thousands upon thousands of homes being foreclosed by the same banks. Hardly the American Dream!
      And how do you feel when you read about big corporations (including Wal Mart and Goldman Sachs) getting themselves insured against their employees deaths? Against the employees' knowledge. The poor employee's family gets thousands of dollars of hospital bills when his family loses its only bread winner and the employer gets millions of dollars in insurance money. Is this the capitalism we ever wanted? Is this the American Dream? Survival of the fittest. Let the weak collapse and make way for the strong. Damn Darwinism if this is what it does to poor. It's just common sense that in this Darwinism the rich become richer and poor become poorer. The rich devise the system! That's no Darwinism because it's not natural selection. It is just a way to glorify killing people using words rather than swords. Its just a way to glorify profit taking from other people's suffering. Going to wars when it is profitable. Its just a way to fool poor just because they are poor.
       I also remember once reading about the man who created and established the first real Indian conglomerate, JRD Tata, when he said. "I don't want India to be a superpower. I want India to be a happy country." When one of the richest Indians of the time says something as profound as this, I think I'd rather read it again and again. The US spent about 225$ million a day on its war on terror, which would be enough to prevent all the millions of people who died in Africa because they could not afford medication or did not have access to clean drinking water. If we really want the whole world to be happy, I bet we have enough money to do so! I feel ashamed to be part of a planet where people are killed-directly and otherwise-just so a select privileged few can profit from it. I refuse to live in a world like this... And I am not leaving!!!