Will Warren Buffet be seen as a savior?

For some reason, when someone can make a profit on something, it is rarely seen as moral, while if its done unprofitably, and even with taxpayer money, it holds the moral high ground. So, when pharmaceutical companies save millions of lives, they are greedy profiteers; but when government hobbles together a weak program to deliver medicine, it is doing vast good.

Now, we can compare government’s massive $700 billion proposed bail out program, with one man’s $5 billion purchase. Sure, it’s a lot smaller, but what if a few dozen of the richest men all decided to buy failing or at-risk companies cheap, restructure them and try to profit from them? Would this be hailed as the greatest men of Wall Street coming together to save the economy? Somehow I doubt it. Instead, it would likely be seen as the greedy profiteers taking advantage of a dire situation to buy up all the world’s riches. They would be called names like “robber baron” or “viper.”

But, how does a program of private for-profit purchasing of the firms differ from a government program? There are the things that make it less “moral”:

1. You won’t have to pay more in taxes in order to pay for the purchase.
2. You won’t lose your job because others have to pay more in taxes.
3. The companies will be restructured with the intent of making each of them more profitable, so they will likely become more efficient and begin hiring more people, driving your wages up.


There are other differences, especially if we end up having to compare nationalizations with private purchases – but with a little luck, the proposal won’t go that far. Still, I have to wonder whether we wouldn’t be better off if government refused to do anything, and people like Warren Buffet came to the rescue.