You know, if you read up on Communism, it's actually a pretty good idea. It looks quite sensible on paper, but somehow in practice, it never works. Why is that?

Because, invariably, someone gets greedy.

Once human nature is introduced to the equation, the whole thing falls apart, because someone or some group decide that the only important thing is how they're doing, and the whole can go off and die somewhere as far as they're concerned.

This same theme is repeated across a wide variety of situations. There will be a promising idea or instituion that is suddenly and completely gutted by the money-before-all-else attitude our society has come to promote as "healthy." This is why there's no pride in craftsmanship any more--the contractor just wants to slap something together as quickly and cheaply as possible and get paid, regardless of whether it looks or functions right.

Executive management generally live by the money-first credo. I've worked in the corporate world for long enough to see (many times) execs absolutely destroy a company to drive up short-term stock prices. They get a 6-figure bonus for raising the stock price, despite the fact that they cannibalized the company to do it. After their bonus comes through they move on to do the same thing to another company or sail away on their golden parachute, never having to deal with the fallout of what they wrought.

The poor schleps left are stuck with that fallout, and with the knowledge that the company they once believed in, sacrificed for, helped build from nothing, is just a shell waiting to collapse, taking their dreams with it. Those blameless employees are left to wander amid the rubble until they, too finally give up and move on.

Especially if the execs that ruined the company haven't left yet, the remaining employees are in trouble. Because if that corporate filth hasn't scurried like rats off the ship they set to sinking, it means they're not done doing damage yet. There will be further affronts to integrity and justice.

I have no desire to see those unfold. Though I feel for the employees left under the thumb of such corrupt and morally bankrupt tyrants, I can't continue to do anything that supports the parasitical management that is so intent on smothering everything worthwhile about their host company.

It is over. What it was it is no longer, and what it has become is less than nothing.

O World! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more -Oh, never more!

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more -Oh, never more!

-Percy Bysshe Shelley