après moi le déluge
(Thanks to Lew Rockwell for this picture.)
Sometimes, I'll type "LOL" in instant messenger even if my laughter was muted. When I saw this picture in email, I guffawed loudly. Oh how we once-mighty have fallen.
Then of course, the scenario spins itself out for me where a former Razorfish employee found a bum in Manhattan who was willing to wear the hat and hold the sign for a photograph. Maybe he gave him $20 to do it. Or maybe he fed him. Maybe he just gave him a cigarette.
The former 'fish now has a photo to spread around the internet, make his friends laugh, etc.
Is the bum better off for the exchange?
Some of us might feel like he was exploited, like he'd sold his dignity for next to nothing.
But values are subjective. They only exist where an actor gives up A for B, foregoes one thing for the expectation of another. In the mind of the actor, the exchange is beneficial, or he wouldn't do it. And value doesn't exist anywhere other than in the mind of the person acting.
Still, my knee jerks at this stuff sometimes.
2 Comments:
"To exploit" does not necessarily have to have a pejorative connotation. My employer and I exploit one another every day as I take advantage of the company's need for my services and the company takes advantage of my lack of independent means. I think exploitation becomes problematic for folks somewhere on a continuum from acceptable to unacceptable.
Dignity may be considered a commodity to be bought and sold. Sometimes folks sell it too cheaply.
In keeping with the previous comment, and my mutualist tendencies, I'd have to say that if the bum was 'exploited' in the leftist sense, by anyone, he was exploited by the larger system that put him in the position where that seemed like a good deal to him.
It's the opportunity cost...
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