when immorality is congratulated

Thrasymachus’ description of a dictator (emphasis added):

This is the person you should consider, if you want to assess the extent to which immorality rather than morality is personally advantageous – and this is something you’ll appreciate most easily if you look at immorality in its most perfect form and see how it enhances a wrongdoer’s life beyond measure, but ruins the lives of his victims, who haven’t the stomach for crime, to the same degree.

It’s dictatorship I mean, because whether it takes stealth or overt violence, a dictator steals what doesn’t belong to him – consecrated and unconsecrated objects, private possessions, and public property – and does so not on a small scale, but comprehensively. Anyone who is caught committing the merest fraction of these crimes is not only punished, but thoroughly stigmatized as well: small-scale criminals who commit these kinds of crimes are called temple-robbers, kidnappers, burglars, thieves, and robbers.

On the other hand, when someone appropriates the assets of the citizen body and then goes on to rob them of their very freedom and enslave them, then denigration gives way to congratulation, and it isn’t only his fellow citizens who call him happy, but anyone else who hears about his consummate wrongdoing does so as well.

Source: Republic by Plato
Translation by Robin Wakefield, 1993
Oxford World’s Classics

doesn’t it remind you just a wee bit of something called the united states government? but, we also have overwhelming similarities to a fascist state as well.

the part of this quote that particularly stands out to me is that were one or a few of the masses to commit similar crimes, there would be severe consequences. however, if you have enough money or political power, the worst you might get is a wagging finger or a slap on the wrist. think, for example, how much companies like DuPont or Merck pollute the land, air, and water bodies in the areas around their manufacturing plants. i read about these in local papers quite often…DuPont has polluted again. so there is a tiny tiny fine they pay. does that cause them to change their ways? why, never! BECAUSE IT IS RIDICULOUSLY CHEAPER FOR THESE COMPANIES TO POLLUTE AND DESTROY LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS AND PAY A MINUSCULE FINE IF CAUGHT THEN TO PROPERLY DISPOSE OF THEIR WASTE. thanks to our government for making that possible! i could also discuss the sanctioned thieving of land and property known as imminent domain–where it is easy for whoever wants it to say that their purpose is an “improvement.” how can shopping malls and any other CRAP they give as a reason be BENEFICIAL? to the people that own those shopping malls, maybe. how does another shitty store improve my life? personally, i avoid them like the plague. too bad everybody doesn’t have the will to stay away. we might be able to hit them where it hurts–their wallets!!!