Monday, May 29, 2006

Preachers of principle preferred over preachers of profit

The Financial Times published my third letter! I tried bragging about it yesterday at an afternoon keg party, but no one knew the paper. So, I gave up. (And I suppose when one is wearing a bikini, one really should not talk about Mao Zedong. That's probably one of those 'rules.')

Here's the text of the letter (you can click on the title link, too):

Sir,
Michael Shtender-Auerbach says Google cannot "preach" when it "bears a fiduciary obligation to put profit over principle" ("Google's lack of virtue", Letters, May 25). He has a point. The most successful preachers put principle over profit; look at China's own Mao Zedong.

It seems we will always prefer preachers of principle over preachers of profit (at least until the phrase "principle motive" becomes as common as "profit motive"). After all, the rarer a thing is, the greater its value . . .

By the way, this letter was inspired by pure, selfless principle (and not by the fact that I recently applied for a job at Google and am still awaiting a response).

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