Thglimited - Heavy Industries

Yesterday I had the privilege to listen to Steven Levitt, author of the book Freakonomics.  Like all good lectures, it took a few hours for his words to really sink in.  So while driving to school this morning his comments on consulting and morals really sunk in.

Elaboration.  From my perception of his story, he used to be a consultant for a pharmaceutical company.  For every day sooner that he could get a new drug to market was essentially worth 1 million dollars.  Long story short, his supervisor did not let him give a recommendation to their client that would shave weeks off of development time.  This recommendation was not given in the best interest of the consulting company, as to not upset another client.

Levitt stated that this hurt him on a moral level.  He didn't like knowing that his client spent millions needlessly.  This did not bother me when I first heard it.  The natural assumption was that spending more money is bad, and morals are essentially what one finds good or bad.

Upon deeper inspection though, should money be a part of ones morals?  Life should be lived to its fullest emotionally and spiritually.  Money is a necessity of our society.  It is a motivational tool for us to work and should be a measure of who deserves the goods and services that they desire.  Sadly this is not how it really works, but that is my theory on the moral component of money.

So should one really be morally anguished at one company spending an extra few million.  That money was just transferred to another company, where it was hopefully spent on employees salaries.  Hopefully these employees took the money home, and feed their children, payed their mortgage, etc.

I don't really have a conclusion, but that's OK.  One should always be evaluating their morals, and hopefully changing them for the better.