Martha Stewart to go to prison

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by Night Stalker: I don't mean to sound hostile Aaron. But I find this sentimentality insulting as I plan to be "rich" or at least very well off. And I am going to do it all on my own to support a lifestyle that I wish to enjoy and support my family and loved ones. I am not doing it for the rest of the world though. To them I say figure it out on your own or ask me how I did it. If the mood strikes me, I may just tell them. But don't demand that I support anyone just because I'm "rich".

[img]smile.gif[/img]
Ok, well, first off, I posted that statement with light-hearted sentiment, perhaps a ' ' smilie would have been in order....

BUT, moving on from there, I'm reasonably well aware of how to 'get rich', having numerous relatives who have become multi millionaires from humble working-class origins (mainly on my Dad's side, but a couple on my Mum's too) and who have never hesitated to tell me what investment strategies I 'should' be employing at my age if I want to follow in their footsteps They can't comprehend the idea that material riches just don't really mean much to me.

But enough about me and my money-grubbing uncles and aunties, my gripe isn't with 'rich folk' that are clever enough to exploit the nuances of the capitalist system to reap exponential monetary profit. My gripe is with the system of private ownership itself. I'm a hard worker, and in order to be respectable in my eyes other people need to be hard workers too. I just don't like the feel of a system that pays a huge percentage of the world's population a pittance for doing vitally important manual work, whilst allowing a tiny minority of people to enjoy the vast majority of a society's collective wealth. Private property 'ownership' is a very new human concept on this planet, only about 10,000 years old or so. It is not necessarily 'natural', and need not be suffered to continue.

[ 07-18-2004, 12:35 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

[Timber Loftis]

You guys don't get it. Martha was a shill for others. She only took her broker's advice. This was a witchhunt by prosecutors hungry for 15 minutes, and nothing more.

Incidently, had she kept he Imclone stock, she'd have been up $75K as of today.

[Night Stalker]

H,

Like I said, I didn't mean to sound hostile (been abit grumpy due to the way too many 18-20 days lately). I wasn't directly targeting you per say, but the comment. Don't think that property is a "new" concept though. Territory has been fiercely guarded since the inception of time. Wether by this predator, or that pack, or that herd; territory has been fought over time and time again to guard to the valuable resources it has ... mostly food and water, though it is true that humans are the ones that attached value to other things and started the concept of commerce. Commerce and trade go back much further that 10000 years though, try since human existance.

Anyway .... cheers mate! [img]graemlins/cheers.gif[/img]

TL .... of course she was a shill for a power hungry prosecutor looking for 15 minutes.

[The Hierophant]

Fair enough bro. Right back atcha [img]graemlins/cheers.gif[/img]

[Oblivion437]

Just to avoid misunderstanding, I'll say how I REALLY feel by copying a rant I wrote somewhere else...

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The following snippet may contain content that is on this forum dubbed verbally obscene. This content is purely the opinion of a sole individual who is not operating in any capacity in the service of any other entities. Furthermore, said individual was sleepless for a period of 48 hours going on 49 when the piece was written. That is all.

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I do agree that it may be somewhat...Oh hell, I'm not going to kid myself, insider trading is so morally bankrupt that the producers of Salo would want to party with these assholes. I don't want to get off on a rant here, but how you can ■■■■ somebody out of their honestly earned multiple millions and not feel at all bad, is so far beyond me that I won't even try to comprehend a kind of greed so virulent that it belongs in a Frank Norris novel. These people spend three years in a resort and then they're out of the box, and free to ■■■■ someone else. Insider trading breaks just about every ethical code in the world, except for theirs...Anyone who would actively defend Martha Stewart's position knowing full well what she did deserves to be locked in a box with very hungry rats.

Is it so much to ask that she tell her fellow stockholders that things were about to turn sour, and maybe tell them to pull out while the money was still good? I'm no advocate of forced civic duty, I've voiced multiple times here and elsewhere how I feel about that sort of thing, but I think she was obligated to do that much. She knew something that, by her inaction renders her complicit. That she actively profited from it lends her first-position culpability.

[ 07-19-2004, 02:45 AM: Message edited by: Oblivion437 ]

[Cerek the Barbaric]

Night Stalker - I took Heirophant's comment to mean that it was good that the rich execs were finally actually being prosecuted for the white collar crimes some of them commit and actually having to serve some prison time for it - in other words, a select few of them are actually being punished for breaking the law...and that is a relatively new trend; because the super-rich could always afford whatever means it took to escape prosecution and/or jail time.

I'm not saying this is true of every millionaire - and probably not even true of most of them. But there is no doubt that wealth DOES have it's privileges and freedom from serious persecution has long been one of those privileges.

Timber mentioned Enron and that is the perfect example to highlight what I'm talking about. How many of thier loyal employees were suddenly without a job - and without any means to pay thier bills or buy groceries?? Yet Ken Ley's wife had the unmitigated gall to go on TV and publicly state that she and Ken had "nothing left". Nothing??? Well, nothing except the 6 vacation houses the gov't had not confiscated at that time, not to mention the millions they still had in various bank accounts. Sorry, her idea of being "broke" and mine are entire galaxies apart. While she was simpering and whining about them being "broke", thousands of former Enron employees were trying to figure out how they were gonna buy groceries to feed their family that week.

THAT is the kind of "rich hunting" our government needs to start doing. I'm not saying that Ken Ley owes everybody a living, but he sure as hell owes an obligation to the employees his actions put out of work. I felt the government should have confiscated and sold ALL of their vacation homes and should likewise have frozen their bank accounts. Leave the Ley's enough to actually live on, then sell the houses and divide the proceeds evenly among the now UN-employed workers that help run Enron on a daily basis. Dividing it up that much wouldn't have given ANY of them any permanent relief, but it sure would have helped in the short term AND it would have actually forced Ken Ley to pay for his actions (literally) so that perhaps he would think twice before doing the same thing over again.

Sorry, I don't mean to rant. You say you've figured out a way to get rich and you plan to pursue it - more power to you and I wish you the best of luck. I wanted to be rich too, when I was in college, and I had my own plan for achieving it. But circumstances and some personal choices prevented that from happening and led to a life of more modest means. That's fine. I've reached the age now that material wealth is not nearly as important as it once was. Besides, I've got a beautiful wife and three fantastic children. In many ways, I'm far richer than friends of mine who have much more money than I'm likely to ever see.