Making the distiction

Making the distinction.

There is always a distinction to be made. Another view point which has been formulated in a different environment with different touch stones, different values.

We were talking about Uber. The American on line taxi ordering service which is sweeping the world. 

As an idea it's terrific. Since we are all connected through the Internet in one way or another we, the seller or the buyer are constantly  at each other's service. 

Services are generally constrained by regulation designed to protect the buyer from exploration since it is assumed the buyer is the more passive and vulnerable party and probably hasn't considered the full implications of what he is buying.

As I wrote that line the image of Lloyd Blankfein came into my mind. His smug, arrogant face as he testified in front of the American Congressional Hearing regarding why the Banks had got themselves into such a financially precarious place in 2004. He was justifying how some of the tools his traders used to make money were not immoral but in his famous analysis " the trade was between two functioning adults and therefore if the one person was selling the other a package of rubbish it was up to the buyer to detect it". This in a sentence summed up the business of modern financial investment. There can be no rules or protection, during the sale, other than the "common sense" of the buyer. 

It turned on its head the age old concept of having to verify what's under the bonnet !

Verifying what's under the bonnet is such a fag. Providing rigorous training or such old fashioned concepts as holiday and sick pay is out of date. Seeking to uphold safety and hygiene are all an unnecessary overhead and distort the bottom line. 

To the person I was speaking to this was all irrelevant since the "opportunity to make money" was the criteria and, to his credit he posted the idea that it did allow ordinary low skilled people the opportunity to work. 

Of course he was right the Internet has allowed us to buy medicines from China, bypassing the doctor or the caution of pharmaceutical registration. It introduces porn into our children's bed-rooms and gambling into the lounge. It is both ugly and beautiful and, as was said this morning, it cuts away the red tape of convention where work skills burnished through experience are cut out of the loop in the never ending desire to reduce things to the bone, where everything is judged on price and not on value.