This Twitter exchange, where Steven Vance laments corruption in politics, reminded me of a book I wrote.
.@danxoneil I think the governor chooses Metra board. I’m afraid of politics cuz I believe there’s no way to avoid being corrupted.
— Steven Vance (@stevevance) July 31, 2013
The thing is that maintaining integrity is everyone’s task, not just politicians. It’s fun to cry out against Wall Street bankers or fat-cat politicians or cheating athletes. But market economies have a way of insidiously corrupting anyone who likes cheap clothes or ketchup in a bottle or VIP passes to clubs. We live in a weird world.
I wrote Economics: Poetry and Essays by Daniel X. O’Neil with Jonny Stepping to address these patterns in my own life. You can see it over on Amazon or download the manuscript here.
Here is the blurb from Books In Print:
Poetry and Essays. The book for those with unclean hands. Economics is based on the gargantuan fact that the world economy is so all-inclusive that it embraces good and evil equally. And no one can do good, like feed their children and clothe themselves and love one another, without somehow bowing down before the presence of evil. Economics moves from large to small. It contains an essay coining the word “trut”– the mutable concoction of facts employed for an ulterior purpose. 4/5 of the truth, lined up in a reasonable facsimile of the truth. And it contains tiny accounts of the author, exposing his own economics, his own bowing down, and finding dignity in it all. Economics contains found poems and obitpoems. The book is designed and illustrated by Jonny Stepping, a San Francisco-based designer. Economics is a book for people.