Here is a This American Life episode about just such a real-life group of people: a collection of various chemical company executives arranging and implementing an international price fixing scheme that lasted years.
The episode focuses on an informant, a junior executive with one of the companies, who captured an enormous amount of footage of the executives jovially discussing the various ways and means they’d be using to knowingly screw over their customers and, in turn, a great deal of the agricultural and industrial economies that depended on their products. The footage is justly described as “probably the most remarkable videotapes ever made of an American company in the middle of a criminal act”.
Everyone has reasons for the things they do, post-hoc or otherwise; I think what distinguishes a villian is a callous acceptance of their own selfishness and a pointed indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering inflicted upon others due to their actions.
Amusingly, I misparsed your sentence, and was about to point out that “was typical” is the same as “wasn’t atypical”.
I parsed ciphergoth’s comment as saying “I would want a lot more footage before I said that this footage is an exception to the rule of ‘mostly sincere stupidity’.”
Here is a This American Life episode about just such a real-life group of people: a collection of various chemical company executives arranging and implementing an international price fixing scheme that lasted years.
The episode focuses on an informant, a junior executive with one of the companies, who captured an enormous amount of footage of the executives jovially discussing the various ways and means they’d be using to knowingly screw over their customers and, in turn, a great deal of the agricultural and industrial economies that depended on their products. The footage is justly described as “probably the most remarkable videotapes ever made of an American company in the middle of a criminal act”.
Everyone has reasons for the things they do, post-hoc or otherwise; I think what distinguishes a villian is a callous acceptance of their own selfishness and a pointed indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering inflicted upon others due to their actions.
O_O
Okay. Mostly there’s just sincere stupidity.
I’d want to see a lot more examples of covert villany footage to be confident that this footage was atypical.
Er, I don’t understand. Do you mean “was typical” or “wasn’t atypical”, or have I misparsed?
Amusingly, I misparsed your sentence, and was about to point out that “was typical” is the same as “wasn’t atypical”.
I parsed ciphergoth’s comment as saying “I would want a lot more footage before I said that this footage is an exception to the rule of ‘mostly sincere stupidity’.”
Yes, that’s what I meant.