Morally bankrupt

I've been heard to remark several times, when in a lather over some issue, that I consider our society to be "morally bankrupt". Nobody has ever challenged me on this, so perhaps they have the same feeling. Maybe what I meant was obvious in the context. On the other hand, we may have had quite different interpretations of the phrase. Perhaps I can use this story about use of the name "Gmail" to illustrate my point. This company Protec, a subsidiary of iiir, which no-one's ever heard of (do a Google search and you get several versions of the name wrangle story before their company website), reckon that because they had an email service "G-mail" (anyone heard of it? is it even available to the general public?), that Google should pay them £25M!!!!!! Google isn't going to. Instead they are going to rename the UK service "Googlemail". For the time being I can keep my gmail address, but perhaps this will eventually have to change. This is a worry for me. It's vital that I receive my emails.

There are a few issues here, the mess of local trademark rules versus global domain names, for example, and the ways of assessing compensation payments. Whole books have no doubt been written on such topics. But the point I want to make is that this company clearly believes they are justified in inconveniencing millions of people in order to try to obtain a windfall of £25M. That is, money they haven't earned. This is what I mean by "morally bankrupt".

When I say "inconveniencing" millions, perhaps I'm not using a strong enough word. In economic terms it would be a cost to millions of people to lose their "gmail" address and have to switch to "googlemail". For iiir/Pronet, this would be an "external" cost. This company could bank their £25M and ignore all the direct and indirect costs to millions of people - which would no doubt exceed £25M. Apart from being unfair this is inefficient for the economy as a whole. And I hate inefficiency almost as much as I hate unfairness. The more efficient the economy is, the less work I have to do to afford the good things in life.

All companies behave this way. It is their raison d'etre to try to maximise their profits, by whatever means the law and society allow them. With everyone being bullied like this day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, is it any wonder that some start to treat others with the same disdain, the same disregard for fairness? Is it any wonder that it is so difficult to control petty crime and inconsiderate, "loutish" behaviour?