it's just good buiness...wrong!

So, I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End this weekend. It’s a good movie. Not as good as the first two, but good. I would recommend it. It is definitely no Jurassic Park 3. Wow, was that a bad movie! If you’ve seen it you know what I mean. If you haven’t, don’t waste your time. In any case, towards the end of the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Jack Sparrow, an eccentric pirate, and Cutler Beckett, who is head of the East India Trading Co, meet up to strike a deal. In the movie Jack fulfills his part of the bargain. Beckett does not. As you find out that Beckett is not going to keep up his part of the bargain he prophetically says, “It’s just good business.”

It really is good business. Beckett got everything without having to give anything in return. What a deal. Beckett’s greed has created a surplus of wealth and power for him and none for others, especially pirates. In the end though, the pirates set a trap for Beckett. His ship is surrounded and as Beckett’s men wait for Beckett to give them a command he is in shock by his blunder. It is really a great scene as two ships fire canons into Beckett’s ship. The ship is destroyed. As the ship is being torn apart from canon fire Beckett’s last words are, “It’s just good business.” In the end Beckett lost his own life, his crew’s lives, and the empire of the EIT Company.

The prophetic line and greed of Beckett reminded me of the greed of companies, banks, and governments. Greedy executives are running their companies into the same mess as Beckett did in the movie. Just look at AIG or WaMu. Even after AIG was ‘bailed out’ they still mustered up the courage to host a party that cost $440,000. And we wonder how we got to this crisis in the first place. And what about the $700 billion dollars? I’m not going to go into whether the $700 billion was the right thing to do. Mostly because I don’t know if it was the right thing to do or not. Just think about these amounts of money towards AIDS, wells for water, education, the environment, energy, etc. It’s just good business, right?