It isn’t the incentive that we need to concern ourselves with here. The animal in us will always crave the purse that is always full, the kitchen of never ending delights, the body the stays eternally youthfull, the crystal ball that reveals all the worlds secrets.

Blackies problem is that he didn’t want to work for it. He wanted to get all the reward through cleverness rather than hard work – which is why he frauded his millions. Why he packed the board with courtiers and sycophants. Why he indulged in every conflict of interest known to modern corporations.

In clearer times a betrayal of this sort would have been rewarded with hanging to near death, slow removal of the intestines and finally four stout horses to quarter the man.

A society that does not set a stern example for its elite becomes corrupted and weak. We may no longer have access to these harsh methods but a modern equivalent is necessary to keep our culture healthy, dynamic and productive.

One sometimes hears jokes about how Roy Thomson was so stingy he rode the TTC to work. This offends our sensibilites about how an elite man, an aristocratic man, a cultural leader should behave. But old Roy had older, stronger and sterner virtues that respected who he was and what he was to our culture – a creator of value.

Conrad was nothing but a dissapator.

“But when it comes to their own resources, we want their consumer preferences to scale up endlessly.”

I thought that the true free market went beyond that type of un-imaginative consumption. Didn’t Mr. Black merely demonstrate that he was not a true capitalist, but merely a chimp hording? But perhaps I am being overly critical. I have yet to understand the “value” of Mr. Black, except of course for his entertainment value.

Isn’t capital merely a tool? Just like a computer? When did we return to the concept that display, rather than function was the way to go, display is good, I love my silk/wool sweaters, and don’t even get me started on my full length leather coat, or how much it cost, but that is affectation, fun, but not terribly important. And really, is it’s worth exactly the same as the joy I had the other day, volunteering to push an elderly gentle lady around Lincoln Park zoo here in Chicago in a wheelchair? No. Not for me. Somehow I sense that Mr. Black was slightly off balance in his pursuit of capital and display. And really, I do feel sorry for him. But then again, I regard all my “capital” as significant. Not just my “credits”. Psychologically speaking, is Mr. Black really someone we should ever have aspired to be? I always looked at him the same way I look at the young local commies who live in public housing here in Chicago, ideological purists. But I have always pitied them. I have always been lucky to be included in both local poetry readings by starving artists, and fundraisers at the most prestigious functions. Those individuals I have admired on both levels, understood these concepts in ways that men like Castro and Black never will. Perhaps I am being too extreme myself, but to me there is only a hairs difference between Mr. Black and Castro.

Jonnie, I think that choice was forced upon him by a spiteful PM. And I’d like to know who the PM thought he was representing when he made that decision. Not me! Thanks, Grant

also, i don’t know how much i can actually trust a man who’s so willing to give up his citizenship for the sole purpose of gaining a title in another.