Philosophy

Greed, Power, and Wealth
· Eli Siegel is a philosopher that shows that economics, with all its statistics, products, human suffering and hopes, is ultimately a matter of ethics and aesthetics · Siegel argues the ethics of drilling of drilling for oil and the power that the United States has over the world because they have control of most of the worlds power · In 32 years, the international competition of oil is vast but its existence is pushed apart by forces of ethics. Once you start drilling in a country, as long as the people were paid something and things looked busy, they didn’t ask how much of the money went back to America (which most of it did) · This is what would happen in the Middle East. Many people in Saudi Arabia were interested in how much of the money that the oil got remained in Saudia Arabia. o “... Most people would grant that Iran sees the oil it has differently from [once]. Most people would grant that the rulers and the population of Saudi Arabia see the oil of that country differently. And the people of Nigeria see the wealth of that country differently. And the people of Venezuela see the wealth of that country differently .... This does not help the stock market. It doesn’t help the profit system.” · The fact that the U.S has control of the oil is the world is a big thing · Even if oil producers somewhere else in the word, such as Saudi Arabia, had the means to profit themselves they would still be serving the failure of the profit systems because they have interfered with the ability of the U.S industries to profit freely · Americans see that so much foreign policy is provoked by the desire to have oil money to be in the hands of American industries · This desire is the result of bombings, rebellion, and invasions, and so on · William R. Freudenburg says, “In that dark liquid beneath the ground, spouting from wells, flowing in pipelines — ethics is flowing too. Ethics in oil is saying to those who see people and earth as existing for their personal profit: "You can no longer have that earth-thing, petroleum, on your terms!" (//Washington Post// · The real questions is //:// should oil, which is need by the worlds people, coming from the land itself, be used for an individuals private profit? Siegel says that it should not be, “There is huge contempt in the idea that people can get what they need for their very lives only if they can supply somebody with a big enough profit. There is huge contempt in seeing another’s deep need as a chance for you to wring as much cash as possible from that person. So the force of ethics has taken, along with other forms, the form of oil, saying: ‘Economics should be based on usefulness to people — not on squeezing from them all you can get. You will have trouble about oil until you see it as belonging truly to everyone.’”

http://www.aestheticrealism.net/lectures/Tro1519.htm

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