Can Man be Ethical?

I finally got around to watching the award winning documentary The Corporation( Part 1 and Part 2) I don't consume very much so I don't have a dvd player and while my intentions were to see it at the theatre, it never came to middle America. Patience IS a virtue and now it is available on google so I could watch it and yes, I did pay the people directly through a voluntary contribution.


While most corporations have absolutely no ethics, I believe most individuals do not have them either. Luckily for businessmen, caveat emptor "let the buyer beware" is very handy as it enables creeps to shift the guilt to the victim. It is only a matter of degrees. We see a corporation billing the Pentagon nearly a million dollars to ship a couple washers and also some ebay individual charging $11 shipping for a first class item which cannot cost more than $3.17 shipping even if it were the heaviest thing allowed in that classification? Or the mechanic (Sanderson Auto) who charges $153 labor to change a battery, or the mechanic (Ultimate) who charges $73 to do a pressure test, or the mechanic (Car Clinic) who quotes a substantial price to do major work and then charges in an extra $50 for an oil change that wasn't even needed or requested. Last week, I saw a workman across the street with extra waste concrete and I had a 8" x 3 foot space that needed filling so I naively thought this could be a win/win situation. He charged me $60 when I could have bought Sackrete and have done it myself for $10. I think a charge of half the amount would have been more than fair and I was particularly disheartened because he has served as a teacher and principal at a local school. Everyone screws everyone as much as they can get by with. I can either feel guilt that there was something I should have done that would have tricked them into being honest or else I can come to the conclusion that humans suck and the only way to get a fair deal is to do everything yourself - and suffer the name calling that goes along with being a woman doing work that is considered "man's work". If you tell me I got this treatment because I was a woman, I want to know if there is some unwritten code that says that women should not only get paid less for their work, but should also be charged more when others do work for them? Our only hope is something like Angie's List to warn people of crooks, but that costs money and is only available in large cities. (I am naming names since I don't have access to Angie's List and if I don't talk about it, I fear I will burst). I almost never confront people directly and I guess that is my major fault but actually quite common in people who come from abused childhoods.


I watched a little video of some guy's experiment on honesty. He dropped 100 billfolds and computed how many people returned them. Now I thought the experiment blew because he only had $2 and no credit cards in each. Most people would like to feel good about themselves if it only cost $2. Had he put $100 in each, I think his results would have been way different. As it was, 14% of the women kept the billfold and 34% of the men (if I remember right - I tried to find it again to post it, but I cannot).


I think I am ready to form my own religion. This is how it will go: God made heaven and earth and the devil made man to F#&K it up. (You DO need supernatural beings in order to have a religion, ya know). The reason Christianity needs replacing is that there is no incentive to be ethical because THEY believe in forgiveness. It is no wonder the earth is on the brink of human extinction as the whole is just the sum of the greedy, unethical parts.