| | David,
Having experienced the sort of thing you describe far too many times, you have my sincere sympathy and understanding. Few things, to me, are more angrifying than this.
You write on a subject I consider extremely important and too little discussed. And your description of how you behave in such situations is valuable.
In my experience, the sort of behavior you describe is all too common. There seems to be no single name for the virtue violated. (Honesty is a part of it. Integrity is relevant, considerateness seems to be closer, keeping one's word maybe closer still. Perhaps justice is after all the best description available but is not entirely satisfactory.)
It is the sort of thing you describe that, I believe, makes the world much less pleasant than it otherwise would be, and among other things, tends to give capitalism a bad name. (It's difficult to persuade people that capitalism is the most moral system when so many alleged examples behave in this way. One can argue with people until one is blue in the face that, of course, such people are not examples of capitalism, but it begins to ring hollow after a while.)
Philosophically, at base, I think Pragmatism is responsible for most of this. (I mean, here, the belief that such behavior is practical -- which in a certain ugly, short-term sense it is, no? After all, such people, do often make a fair amount of money this way.)
The topic touches on one the more general one that, in my opinion, Rand (and others later) have spent too little time and ink discussing: How to live a rational (practical) life in a (sometimes) irrational society. I hope your article opens up the discussion and this thread becomes very active. I'm sure the participants in this forum will have many useful and insightful comments on the topic. It's especially important for the younger crowd, to help them avoid some of the ugliness the older ones have experienced.
Here's one small contribution. (The following is not recommended for everybody.)
Like you, I mostly grit my teeth and take the money, knowing that it's an 'imperfect' world and don't want to sacrifice higher values for the sake of that short-term and fades-too-rapidly emotional satisfaction that comes from telling the creatures off. 'Converting' them, i.e. saying something which is likely to improve their principles or behavior is generally out of the question and mostly beside the point in such circumstances.
My method was (more than once) to save enough money to simply 'go on strike' for a while and get away from the necessity to deal with such people. Not a viable method for most, especially those with families to support, but it does wonders for re-charging the batteries.
I look forward to hearing how others deal with this.
One final point. The issue, clearly, goes far beyond monetary interactions. Anywhere people rub elbows, similar kinds of things can happen. Whether it's standing in line at a bus when some hollow person pushes to the head of the line, or waiting for someone who's holding up ten cars in a parking lot because they simply must have a spot 50 feet closer to the store entrance, or just some boor playing thumpa-thumpa 'music' that shakes the walls on the train or of your house.
Quite frankly, maybe my focus is too narrow here, but I consider this the issue of our time. It seems to be at the base of so much else.
Your thoughts?
(Edited by Jeff Perren on 5/07, 10:10am)
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