Diogenes is sitting across the table from famed astrologer Madam Moonbeam. He urgently needs her help to sabotage The Man’s errant memoires, but is objecting to the price he will have to pay.
How can you possibly justify charging me $1,000, he asks, after all we’ve been through? I know prices have doubled, and you’ve got a living to make, but even so…
Listen, said Madam Moonbeam, I’m doing you a favour! $1,000? Some of our Gucci politicians happily pay a lot more than that! And for bankers and businessmen looking to game the system, the sky’s the limit!
Diogenes does a mental double-take. Well, he thinks, she’s not wrong. In fact, he’s got to admire her entrepreneurial spirit. And if she’s fleecing our politicians and their business cronies, good for her. The fleecers fleeced, one might say.
OK, he agreed. But you understand that this little chat never happened. Because if The Man were to find out what we’re up to, it doesn’t take a clairvoyant to know what would happen next!
Madam Moonbeam nodded. We’ll focus on his self interest, she said. Persuade him that writing such a tell-all would come back to bite him. Convince him that discretion is the better part of valour, that sort of thing.
Fine, said Diogenes, but we can’t do it alone. The Man thinks it will help get him elected to parliament, so we need a plan of action that includes all possible contingencies. Where do we start? Who can we trust?
That’s for you to decide, said Madam Moonbeam, but I suggest you observe the cast-iron golden rule, which is: trust no-one, especially where money, power and influence are concerned!
Which includes you, Diogenes thinks grimly, casting his mind back to the many times Madam Moonbeam helped The Man conduct his nefarious business activities. Oh well, he thinks, needs must when the devil drives…
So, said Madam Moonbeam, give me a couple of days to read the runes, and I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, carry on as normal, and don’t do anything that might arouse his suspicions.
At that very moment, The Man is grilling the banker buddy about the latter’s prospects for a top job at the Central Bank, and how it might benefit their business interests.
I’m thinking hedging dollars and shorting the rupee, he said, with heads-ups on interest rates, tariffs, price controls, etc etc. Then there’s the inside track on state-owned enterprises…
Jesus, thinks the banker buddy, what the hell have I got myself into? Furthermore, is this really the kind of people we need in parliament to get us out of the hole dug by these kinds of people?
He recalls the words of late great neoliberal economist Milton Friedman: “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.
“Unless it is politically profitable, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
Hence the million-dollar question: what really is the right thing, and is it really worth doing..?