Trying to force people to be as careful with OPM as with their own leads you down the path of the Federal Acquisition Regulations and requiring three written bids to buy a box of pencils. There's a sensible compromise there, and with a sensible compromise you end up leaving some room for minor abuses and clever exploits like including a pair of nylons with each box of carbon paper. And part of the reason Office Max and Staples succeeded is that their founders noticed that the office supply market had evolved into one with endemic overpricing, and figured out how to persuade people to shop for cheaper office supplies. (I have no idea what fraction of Office Max's sales are to corporate buyers, but I bet it's a lot.) So that *is* an example of the market working, just slowly.

Teresa: I don't think Fool Money is just an extension of OPM. I think it's a different animal -- as far as I can tell, some people are just into status, and others aren't. [Cue stories of people who will go without food so they can buy a Rolex watch or a $200 pair of sneakers, because that's their form of status.]

If you're into status, and you have pots of money (whether legitimately or because you've stolen it or conned someone out of it) there's nothing you can spend the money on that has real value -- all you can do is spend it on things that you and I think are idiotic, like million-dollar decorating jobs, or bigger and bigger yachts, or more books for your library that you don't have time to read, um, er, never mind that last...

Anyway, as long as there are people with enormous fortunes and lousy taste, there will be people to cater to them with $6000 shower curtains -- and the buyers will be happy with their purchases. We can only hope that at least a few of them are not so tasteless, and pay for the creation of absurdly expensive, useless things like Faberge eggs.

Out of curiosity, what would your reaction be if you found out he'd gotten the company to blow a million bucks of stockholder money on an anonymous donation to his favorite charity, say, Doctors Without Borders? How about to PETA? The NRA?

Note that I'm not saying these people aren't fools, just that their being tasteless status-hogs and their being fools (and probably criminals) are two independent problems.

I hope the $6,000 shower curtain was worth it. :P

I'd bet this is a byproduct of the desktop comuter revolution, which made it much easier to start small businesses, created a new wave of people working out of their spare rooms, all of them spending their own money on office supplies.

Of course, once the discount office supply chains (and their national advertising campaigns) existed, corporate buyers started using them too.

Companies spend staggering sums of money on their corporate headquarters, which are often hideous (and almost always miserably designed from a usage point of view, but don't get me started on I. M. Pei), but again, that's an investment, and at least other people get to look at the building. How many folks did Koslowski let use his potty?

(Just out of curiosity, what is the average lifespan of Italian silk used in a showerbath? Or is there a special Tuscan demildewing process for fifty grand a shot plus Concorde tickets?)

I am certainly not suggesting that there's no such thing as insensate corporate greed. That would be pretty darn silly, especially for someone who had books with a Gulf & Western division. But Koslowski is another matter: the limitless individual greed of company officials who, having no way of keeping score other than by their remuneration, simply spend company money as if it were their own. This ain't new either, though some people seem to think it is.

Googling gives me http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2002-09-26-tyco-spending_x.htm as a convenient reference that comments on what the items were. The $445 pin cushion was 18th century Frehch; Sotheby's is selling a similar one with a starting bid of $460.

The prices are in line with the collectible market, and it would have been no more obscene for him to buy at that price than it is for anyone else, if he had been using his own (not fraudulently earned) money to do so. Since he did seem to be misusing company funds, it doesn't really matter whether he misspent $15,000 on an umbrella stand or a sports car, although the umbrella stand makes for better outrage in soundbite TV commentaries, as well as concentrating our outrage on Kozlowski and diverting our attention from the underlying scandals that allowed Tyco, Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, etc. to flourish in the deregulated world.

If the money had been spent on something I could understand or sympathize with, or if the money had not been acquired by fraud or theft or whatever shade of larceny it turns out to be, I would be less bothered. But only a little less.

Somebody make me rich, please? I'll show you how far money can really go. :)

Here's the question: It was *my* money. I worked hard for it. I earned it legitimately. I WANTED a carbon-graphite sword. Am I socially irresponsible or even stupid for making this decision?

On the other hand, spending one's own honestly-acquired money on a $445 pin cushion is no more inherently offensive, in my opinion, than spending it on a couple of shelves' worth of hardcover books or a weekend at an sf convention. The fact that I like books and sf conventions, and have no use for pincushions, antique or otherwise, is irrelevant.

Some of us feel guilty for not tithing. I have friends who DO tithe. What remains of their net is still greater than my gross, though.

One of the things wrong with classic Marxism, in my opinion as a moderately-educated Leftist, is that it assumed that aggregate truths are universal. Fallacy: some people, as a high school teacher of mine once said, some people would rather take a nice vacation than replace their living room suite.

I think if you pay your taxes and behave responsibly, you should spend your money any way you want. That's one freedom we have; another is to make fun of each other for our choices.

A friend of mine coined a term in this general field. She was given a fountain pen with a gold nib as a gift (she's a calligrapher). "But it's not a Trumpism," she commented, and showed me how the flexibility of the gold gave her writing an extra sweep and smoothness.

It may not matter to you or me how smooth our writing looks, but it matters tremendously to her. Fellow leftists, let's rethink "Stand Up For Judas," hmmm?

I certainly hope that you weren't trying to say that only those on the left give to charity and stuff, because as assumptions go it has rather less universal validity than might be desired.

Or is the idea rather that it's okay to buy a Mont Blanc fountain pen provided that one feels guilty about it afterward?

Of course, like most people, I splurge on things for myself. But I try to maintain a sense of proportion (in my economy a splurge is in the tens or hundreds of dollars, not the thousands). Whether people give money away (their own money) also makes a difference in how I view their spending on themselves.

It also seems to me that there's a big difference between occasional splurges (I presume that Myke doesn't buy new a fencing sword every day) and a lifestyle that consists of nothing but spending big bucks on yourself. Recently I read an article in San Francisco magazine about luxury resorts, and I had very mixed feelings about it. I don't think I'd begrudge anyone an occasional luxury vacation. But when people live that way all the time, when they never have to decide between which of two things they want more, when they don't know or have forgotten the difference between wanting something and needing it -- I find that horrifying. And it seems to me that living like that is inherently exploitive, even if you haven't actually stolen the money you're living on.

Now, I don't know much about Kozlowski. Maybe these purchases were not part of a more general "high life" pattern. If someone knows more about this, please expound.

It's especially bad with antique clothing. I love the way that Edwardian lace blouses look. My aesthetic sense makes me want to collect them, and preserve them, and display them, and if some of them look like they'll survive it, even wear them...

But then I look at all the tiny pintucks and delicate insertions and I can't help but think "sweatshops." And "Triangle Shirtwaist Fire." Maybe none of my direct ancestors worked in a turn-of-the-century sweatshop, although one great-grandfather was a tailor, but it was people very like them who DID. And I wonder if it's morally defensible to be enchanted by the beauty of something that represents so much suffering, and if it's right to spend my money on something that, a few generations ago, I might have made but would never have been able to wear.

It's an easier choice with rugs. Buy a machine-made patterned rug instead of a handmade one, and give the difference in cost to an organization working to stop child labor in the rug industry. (Or, considering the huge price difference and the fact that I really couldn't have afforded the handmade rug anyway, at least give the cost of the machine-made rug again.)

But what do you do when it's an antique?

I feel that way about those lovely European cathedrals. How many people starved while the church was spending a fortune to build those?

Good grief, no. Although I can see why you'd think so from reading what I wrote (now that I reread it myself). (And I almost laughed aloud at your masterful example of sarcastic understatement; I'll use that one.)

It's about what you think is OK to do with huge quantities of wealth. When strangers have it, I mean. I'd like to think that if I became a multi-millionaire tomorrow, I'd give a lot of it away (maybe MOST of it). But who knows? Money changes everything.

See, as a Leftist I think Bill Gates should give away more of his money. Someone once claimed in my presence that one year of his income would be enough to eliminate hunger worldwide (sounds like an exaggeration, but I'm not sure). I think a person on the right would say he had a perfect right to spend it on anything he wanted, and have no moral opinion on what he OUGHT to do with it. (For the record I think he has a RIGHT to do with it as he pleases; I just think he has a moral obligation to do some good with it.)

By the way, his dad thinks so too. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the senior Bill's deal.

I agree with you, but let me ask you a tough question. Suppose, by some twist of magic, you had the power to FORCE Bill Gates to give his money away. Nobody would be harmed, Bill would just have no choice in where his money went.

Would you use this power? Or would you simply remain displeased with his choices?

So, apparently I'm not a very good leftist. Alas.

But Kozlowski's a piker next to Ken Lay, who got Enron to drop ~$40million on a Gulfstream V so his personal taxi didn't have to stop for fuel between Houston and Europe, per http://boston.com/globe/magazine/2002/0929/enron_entire.htm. The source could be exaggerating some items, but I was once a light-plane pilot and read, dreaming, about bizjets; the numbers look plausible.

I suppose Fool Money reflects the inflation in executive salaries; you can only boast of your annual take a few times before people start ignoring you, but dividing it among possessions gives you more opportunities to show off. (A pop-culture view of the later Roman Empire looks in the same direction; does anyone here have \data/ on the expenses of the aristocracy?)

How would "Nobody...be harmed" if he had no choice in where his money went? Doesn't that harm him? (Not the taking of his money - I of course think he should be paying much higher taxes - but the lack of choice.)

Any use of force harms the forcee, in my view.

And I distrust such questions. They make no sense, because things like money and spending and control don't exist in a vacuum. How'd I get this power? Do I have a mandate from whatever being gave it to me? Do I have this power over everyone, only rich people, or only over Bill Gates? And many, many questions like that.

Power is funny. I'm not drawn to it, but would I pick it up if I found it in the road? Who knows? I'd like to think I wouldn't use it, but I suppose I probably would...because I'd be tempted to "do good" with it. And I'd slide down the slope from there.

All shall love me, and despair.

Sorry, Christopher, but I think you're dead wrong on this one. If I had to, I could drag my mother, who was a regional Youth For Nixon president, over to give you her moral opinions on what rich folks ought to do with money. I guarantee you she's got 'em, and so do most of her rightie friends. I don't think that having a moral opinion on what someone ought to do with money, uncoerced, is at all limited to the left. Or, as Mike pointed out above, universal to it.

It's easy to be cynical about right-leaning politicians using religion as a stage prop, and I have that kind of cynicism myself, because many of them do use it that way. But there are also some pretty sincere right-leaning voters who genuinely believe that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Not to mention the secular righties who think that their brand of social and economic policy are really, truly the best for everybody.

I'm not saying they're right. But I'm saying it's not very accurate to act as though they have no moral opinions on the subject of wealth.

On the other hand, where would our civilization be without the wondrous products of extreme outrageous luxury and beauty such as the Taj Mahal, the Louvre, the Egyptian Pyramids, the Notre Dame Cathedral, Chinese Imperial Palace, etc., that have been created over the span of history by the powerful or the ruthless or often just insane despots? Millions of lives of slaves and ordinary workers went into their creations, and the pain and suffering acocmpanying these wonders was likely to be immense.

And yet, say, none of this had happened, and instead all these people of power decided not to build and instead created social programs.

We may or may not have a human civilization with any extreme awe-inspiring works of beauty.

I just don't now. Maybe if I'd been a slave in ancient Egypt who had to give up my life to drag blocks to form the pyramids, just maybe if I had known the greater picture, I'd be willing to give up my existence for the enduring value of enriching history.

Or maybe not.

:-)

Vera

Certainly there are people who consider themselves quite conservative, who vote Republican every time, and who have strong moral opinions on how the rich should spend their money. You're quite right on that.

A few months ago, someone on a local San Diego mailing list wrote an essay about homelessness. He had found out that a homeless man had died overnight in the parking garage in the building he worked in, and he wrote about how he felt terribly, terribly sad about it, and how terrible it is that none of us stops to think about the homeless.

Some other people wrote follow-up mails agreeing with him, and congratulating him on his sensitivity, and his courage in saying what needs to be said.

I found the exchange exasperating, because I volunteer once a week at the computer lab of a homeless shelter. I had posted a call for volunteers to the list a couple of months earlier. Nobody showed up to volunteer. So I tried to channel my exasperation into a humorous response, posting a mock-flame to the original poster and telling him that if my strong language pissed him off he, or anyone else who was offended, was welcome to come down to St. Vincent de Paul Village in San Diego 6-9 pm Wednesday nights, get the guard to buzz him in to the computer lab, and then come up and take a punch at me. And then I'd help them sign up to volunteer.

Well, my humor missed the mark, and people were just plain offended. A minor flamewar ensued. Some people said how DARE I presume to judge other people. Lurkers Supported Me In E-mail. I re-read the exchange, decided I'd been in the wrong, and posted an apology. Nobody responded to my apology. Nobody came down to volunteer at SVDP Village from that mailing list, either.

There's a word I've become fond of: "slacktivism" - easy things some people do instead of true activism and charity work. The Internet is a slacktivism engine. Instead of working to stamp out hunger, people make the Hunger Site their home page and feel virtuous every time they reload the page, because every time they reload, somebody somewhere in the world is getting a cup of rice. (What the hell is with the Hunger Site anyway? Why don't they just donate the money for the rice, instead of going through all the rigmorale about matching clicks with donations?). Instead of taking the time to draft a letter to a Congressman about an issue they care about, the Internet slacktivist forwards an e-mail on to 10 people. Instead of volunteering to help the poor, the slactivist feels guilty about luxury purchases - but makes the purchases anyway.

The irony is that the slacktivists are afraid of is actually pretty easy. My three hours in the computer lab at St. Vincent de Paul Village are pretty pleasant. Trying to explain computer basics to someone else is mentally challenging. Sometimes somebody has an advanced question, and I get to putter around a while until I get the answer. The staff member who works the evening shift with me is quite a conversationalist and she leads a life that's more interesting than an entire season of "Days of Our Lives," so when things are slow - which they often are - I just sit and let her update me on gossip. Then, on the way home, I treat myself to some junk food, and eat it while watching "Enterprise" or "The West Wing" on TiVo.

I really admire my late father-in-law. He was an orthopedic surgeon, a real prime example of Middle 20th Century Midwestern Haute Bourgoiesie (sp.?). He bought a new Cadillac every few years. He was a 33d Degree Mason, and a member of a couple of other midwestern lodges where overfed white men smoked too much tobacco, drank too much, ate a lot of red meat, and wore silly hats. He drank highballs. He and my wife's family lived in a big house in a wealthy midwestern suburb. But he also did a lot of charity work at home. Former patients came to his funeral, and talked about how sometimes they didn't have enough money to pay but he treated them anyway. And he did good work too - a couple of the former patients had artificial joints that lasted for DECADES. Former employees came to the funeral - that REALLY impressed me, how many of you would go ot the funeral of a former boss (and not to, you know, laugh and spit in the coffin)? He volunteered a couple of times on the ship "Hope," which was a hospital ship that docked around the world treating people in the Third World. He served during World War II, and didn't see his wife and children for a couple years. He led a balanced life, did a lot of good work, and I don't think he ever felt guilty about his privilege.

This message is not directed at anybody responding to this thread. Obviously, the talk about guilt and luxuries inspired this response, but I really don't know any of you, except for the Nielsen Haydens and Debra Doyle, and I don't know how much charity work and activism you do. Still, I encourage any of you feeling guilty about your luxuries to instead channel that energy into charity work and social activism - and then enjoy your luxuries. (I can watch both "Enterprise" AND "The West Wing" after my weekly volunteer stint because we have TWO TiVos. Some might call that a wasteful luxury, but our money worked hard for it blah blah blah.)

I found these cashmere socks going for $42.00. Only a bit more than four times the price of the most expensive socks I ever bought.

Though they enter the realm of specialized equipment, I wondered if these waterproof biking socks (about $45.00) would do.

But, as the interior designers cited in Teresa's post say, the truly well-heeled favor antiques, so Kozlowski might not be able to settle for anything less than socks owned by Napoleon Bonaparte, which were purchased by the Bata Shoe Museum for $4545.

If anyone has a lead on socks more dear than that, I'd like to know about it.

(Footnote, because footnotes are irresistible in a discussion of socks: Knitting goes back to at least 1000 BC, when it was already a sophisticated technology. Unfortunately, very few pieces of knitting have survived, because it's so easy to unravel old yarn for new uses. We mostly have burial-bits, plus historic items like Charles I's knit silk shirt (in good condition except for a few bloodstains), and Napoleon's socks. The earliest depiction of knitting is a fourteenth-century painting of the Virgin Mary, who's shown expertly picking up stitches around the neckline of a shirt she's knitting in the round on four needles.)

If U.S. astronauts' kit includes any kind of special socks, I expect they'll have cost the moon and stars. I can't begin to guess whether they'd cost more or less than those red wool Egyptian socks.

You beat me to the sock puns, darn it!

Urrrgg. You should be socked for that.