A symptom... or a cause?

Just as Michael Milken was the poster child for 80's greed and excess and Enron became a negative benchmark for the 90's, the millennium has found it's new anti-hero in Bernie Madoff. You look at these men and their stories and wonder how they could operate from such a lack of conscience. Why men like this could be so driven by greed and personal wealth that they truly stopped at nothing. I argue that it is not a unique all-consuming preoccupation with gain, but more that it's all a matter of scale.

How many people would stiff a waiter if they though they could get away with it? If you're given too much change at a store, do you give the overage back or do you put it in your pocket and go on your way? If you are undercharged for something, do you bring it to some one's attention and pay what is truly owed? While some do, many don't. How is this any different than what these men did, except in scale? You knew your "victim" just as they did. You had a way to rectify the situation and be honest and fair, but you didn't. So did they.

Whether for billions or cents, the ethical implications were the same. While you condemn their actions, look inside yourself- is there a part of you that is secretly in awe of them and their nerve? A part that admires the sheer guts it took to pull it off in such a grand scale? A part that wonders if you could have gotten away with it too? Madoff was not "caught"; he confessed to family, who then turned him in. Would he have gotten caught eventually? Who knows; there were certainly enough red flags for the regulators and investors to see, but they didn't. He could have taken off and disappeared before anyone would have done anything about it.

When you read about Madoff or his "brothers", take a moment to think. Are the seeds of his actions in you? And when you are placed in a situation that tests your integrity, even if it is small, what will your choice be? The Madoffs of the world have their place- they are a cautionary wake up call to the greed that lives within all of us. It is up to each of us to learn from it.