Who Killed Kenny? Enron

As to be expected, Enron frontman Kenneth Lay had a major heart-attack today. Why this was a big surprise in the news is very curious to me. This guy was facing life in prison, was convicted of several felonies, and is only five years removed from fumbeling away almost $60 Billion dollars and destroying thousands of lives in the process. A heart attack in this case should have been expected.

Looking back at Enron, it's kind of amazing that the whole thing unfolded under all of our noses the way that it did, without anyone doing much about it. Sure people knew about it, but ultimately money kept them quiet. I'm not trying to sound naive - I understand that money makes the World go 'round - all I'm saying is that it's unfortunate that we as a society have sucommed to sacraficing our ethics in exchange for a few extra zero's in our pay check.

Forgive me as I am in a bit of a philisophical, cynical and fatalistic mood tonight. I would be interested in hearing the comments of Plato, Socrates and others on the current plight of our society. We pay athletes millions of dollars, all so we can be entertained for a couple hours. Yet, at the same time, a teacher somewhere in America just finished spending 11 hours trying to teach American Civics to a bunch of unappreciative high-school students, and is trying to figure out how in the hell he's going to pay for the Prada bag his wife just purchased on a whim.

Don't get me wrong, normally I'm a capitalist who whole-heartedly believes in every last word that Adam Smith wrote, however, I believe that somewhere along the lines we may have missed the point when it comes to who gets paid what in our society, and those who pirate money shouldn't always get away with it.