I had this odd experience the other day. A gentleman sets an appointment to meet with me in my small business and make a presentation about his company can provide a no-obligation evaluation and present proposals for reducing taxes, streamlining the sales process, helping with business development and acquisitions, etc. Sounds good, right?

After he left, I googled his company and found dozens of "this is a scam" related sites. It appears their method is to get in the door, get you to sign a contract, and then bill a small business for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of worthless services provided by inexperienced / unqualified "project managers."

Now, this morning, I think, here was a guy, well-dressed, professional, and a great salesman. Very good. Handled every question (obviously well-trained). The rest of the operation (the boiler-room-sounding main office call center) raised the red flags for me. But why is this guy working for a company like THIS, when he could be selling something productive?

OK, we're in an economic collapse. Good jobs are hard to find. So what's happening? Are we all just turning on ourselves to scratch out a living by taking from others? Have we become a nation of economic cannibals?

Case 1: Gas price gougers. If we accept the premise that the cost of the wholesale gas did NOT go up to $4.70 (since gas in Nashville, Lake City, etc stayed at $4 even), then $4.99 gas at Pilot/Weigels was nothing more than an opportunity to make more money by taking advantage of a bad situation (although possibly legal, I dunno if we have any laws in TN covering this). Fallout? Small businesses and independent contractors shut down operations, causing a larger economic ripple, larger than the possible extra profit the gougers might have made.

Case 2: Mortgage brokers. Not in every case, but I'm sure in hundreds of cases in Knoxville, the mortgage broker knew perfectly well that they were underwriting loans that the lendee couldn't pay, but doing a great sales job to convince them that they could. Maybe the broker didn't think about the long term implications on that family (including, possibly, domestic violence, divorce, and suicide), because they didn't want to. They wanted their commission check too badly.

There are more cases of this- where the economic damage reaped by Party X far exceeds the economic gain of Party Y. I suppose it's just another extension of the "Tragedy of the Commons," a glaringly huge hole in Free Market theory.

But it seems to be permeating everyday life. Again, have we become a nation of economic cannibals, destined to consume (and destroy) this country from within?

And, to make a last minute political tie-in: isn't this a moral issue? Isn't the self-acclaimed 'moral police' party standing with the economic cannibals through their laissez-faire economic theories, and taking a stance that is not only immoral, but supporting an immorality that can more directly lead to the downfall of this country, far more so than R-rated movies?