The prefix eco- pertains to a household or environment. Eco-nomics and eco-logy are related and parallel sciences, both teaching us how energy moves in an environment. Money and food are both forms of energy.

In my last post, I compared those at the top of the economic food chain to top predators. Now I think this is not always true: those that took huge bonuses for abject failure, whose greed brought their companies and the world’s economy tumbling down are really parasites.

Below are a few of examples of economic parasites.

Bernie Madoff

Convicted of defrauding thousands

of investors of billions of dollars

[image from www.foxnews.com]

Being a parasite and not a predator, the Ponzi scheme king fed off of the life savings of those who trusted him. He is one of the few in this category who will see the inside of a prison cell. Most of them get away with it.

AIG (American International Group) Executives

Have taken more than $170 billion in federal rescue money

[image from media2.tbo.com]

President Barack Obama declared today [3/16/09] that insurance giant American International Group is in financial straits because of "recklessness and greed" and said he intends to stop it from paying out millions in executive bonuses.

"It's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay," Obama said at the outset of an appearance to announce help for small businesses hurt by the deep recession.

"How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat," the president said.

Obama spoke out in the wake of reports that surfaced over the weekend saying that financially strapped American International Group Inc. was paying substantial bonuses to executives.*

A Mega-Parasite Award

goes to the Third Reich

General Dwight Eisenhower inspecting Nazi
plundered art. [image from isurvived.org]

Nazis were truly ravenous parasites. They looted lives, art, gold, jewels, and more from the countries and people they conquered and enslaved. They pulled teeth containing precious metals from dead mouths, made lampshades from human skin and soap from the body fat of their victims. Nazis were greedy, despicable monster leeches. Their take was hundreds of millions of 1945 dollars -- billions today.

Top predators are caretakers of their ecosystem. They cull the weak and diseased; without them, animal populations will increase unsustainably. They have been given a bad rep by humans who are parasites in predator clothing. Don’t be fooled.

My dictionary defines parasite as a person who receives advantage or support from another or others without giving any useful or appropriate return. This describes CEOs and other executives who enrich themselves at the expense of shareholders, customers and employees, running their companies into the ground, then collecting huge bonuses for failure. They have a flagrant sense of entitlement. Parasites are unapologetic in their behavior.

Not all corporate executives fall into the parasite category. I am going to name a few who do not. This list is by no means inclusive of everyone who deserves to be on it. By studying these people, you will be better able to tell who is a caretaker and who is just a taker.

George Soros

Founder and Chairman

Open Society Institute

[image from www.soros.org]

A global financier and philanthropist, George Soros is the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote, among other things, the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.

Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930. His father was taken prisoner during World War I and eventually fled from captivity in Russia to reunite with his family in Budapest. Soros was thirteen years old when Hitler's Wehrmacht seized Hungary and began deporting the country's Jews to extermination camps. In 1946, as the Soviet Union was taking control of the country, Soros attended a conference in the West and defected. He emigrated in 1947 to England, supported himself by working as a railroad porter and a restaurant waiter, graduated in 1952 from the London School of Economics, and obtained an entry-level position with an investment bank. ...

In 1956, Soros immigrated to the United States. He worked as a trader and analyst until 1963. During this period, Soros develop[ed] his "theory of reflexivity," ... which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. …[I]n 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds, through which he accumulated a vast fortune.

As his financial success mounted, Soros applied his wealth to help foster the development of open societies. In 1979, Soros provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Soon he created a foundation in Hungary to support culture and education and the country’s transition to democracy. (One of his projects imported photocopy machines that allowed citizens and activists in Hungary to spread information and publish censored materials.) Soros also distributed funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet physicist-dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1982, Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honor of Karl Popper, and began granting scholarships to students from Eastern Europe. Bolstered by the success of these projects, Soros created more programs to assist the free flow of information. He supported educational radio programs in Mongolia and later contributed $100 million to provide Internet access to every regional university in Russia.

The magnitude and geographical scope of his philanthropic commitments, coupled with the core principle of fostering open societies, has allowed Soros to transcend the limitations of many national governments and international institutions. During the 1980s, Soros financed a trip by young economists at a reform-minded think tank in China to a business university in Budapest; he also established a grantmaking foundation in China to foster civil society and transparency. In 1991, he helped found the Central European University, a graduate institution in Budapest that focuses on social and political development. Soros spent $50 million to help the citizens of Sarajevo endure the city’s siege during the Bosnian war, funding among other projects a water-filtration plant that allowed residents to avoid having to draw water from distribution points targeted by Serb snipers. Most recently, he has provided $50 million to support the Millennium Villages initiative, which seeks to lift some of the least developed villages in Africa out of poverty.

In 1993, Soros created the Open Society Institute, which supports the Soros foundations working to develop democratic institutions throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His network of philanthropic organizations dedicated to building open societies has expanded to include more than 60 countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Despite the breadth of his endeavors, Soros is personally involved in planning and implementing many of the foundation network’s projects. His visionary efforts have produced a remarkable record of successful philanthropy, including efforts to free developmentally challenged people from life-long confinement in state institutions, to provide palliative care to the dying, to win release for prisoners held without legal grounds in penitentiaries in Nigeria, to halt the spread of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, to create debate societies, to promote freedom of the press, and to help resource-rich countries establish mechanisms to manage their revenues in a way that will promote economic growth and good governance rather than poverty and instability.

In 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was one of his main priorities. During the 2004 campaign, he donated significant funds to various groups dedicated to defeating the president.*

Bill Gates

Founder of Microsoft Corporation

and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

[image from www.gatesfoundation.org]

We created the Gates Foundation in 2000 because we believe in the principle that every human life has equal worth. The life of an impoverished child in a developing country is as precious as the life of a middle-class kid in a developed one. A family struggling to make ends meet in an American inner city matters as much as a family thriving in a safe, suburban neighborhood. Today, billions of people never even have the chance to live a healthy, productive life. We want to help all people get that opportunity.

We know it can be done because this is a unique moment in history: Scientific and technological advances are making it possible to solve big, complicated problems like never before. If these advances are focused on the problems of the people with the most urgent needs and the fewest champions, then within this century billions of people will grow up healthier, get a better education, and gain the power to lift themselves out of poverty. Warren Buffett shares our sense of optimism, and we are deeply humbled by his decision to give a significant portion of his resources to the foundation.

We're so hopeful about the potential for rapid progress that we've decided the foundation will spend all its money in the next 100 years. In this century, our world has the opportunity to fulfill the great human promise that all lives have equal value.*

Bill Gates, the richest man in America and one of the richest in the world, has been at the top of the economic energy chain for a long time. He has given billions of dollars to his foundation. Among his goals is the elimination of several diseases.

Richard Branson

Founder of Virgin Airlines and

Virgin Unite entrepreneurial foundation

[image from entrepreneur.virgin.com]

Virgin Unite is the entrepreneurial foundation of the Virgin Group. We work with great partners all over the world to develop new approaches to social and environmental issues.

We’re fortunate that Richard and the Virgin group pick up our overhead costs – so 100% of all donations go directly to the frontline where it is needed the most.

We believe that the only way we are going to drive the scale of change that needs to happen in the world, is if we revolutionise the way that the business and social sectors work together.

We want to use all the entrepreneurial energy across the Virgin Group to help drive this revolution.*

Richard Branson is the 236th richest person according to Forbes' 2008 list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of approximately $4.4 billion USD.

Warren Buffett

Berkshire Hathaway

Buffett Foundation

[image from money.cnn.com]

Billionaire-populist Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest man in the US (after Bill Gates) and one of the world's richest men, pools his investments in holding company Berkshire Hathaway. It operates in the insurance industry and uses the "float" -- the cash collected before claims are paid out -- to invest in a growing stable of businesses. Buffett owns about 40% of Berkshire Hathaway.*

Buffett is worth $44 billion dollars. He is giving 85% of his fortune away before his death, most of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

He has also given billions to the Buffett Foundation, renamed in honor of his late wife, Susie. The foundation has mainly focused on reproductive health, family planning, and pro-choice causes, and on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.*

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Now you are getting the idea. The top predator in an ecosystem, biological or fiscal, is a caretaker who keeps the ecosystem healthy, one who is a caretaker -- not just a taker.

The Nazis and other human parasites were and are human beings and -- in this holographic universe -- you and I also contain this potential behavior within us. Whenever greed conquers compassion, the Nazi parasite that lives in all of us comes alive. Whenever we act primarily to enrich ourselves while being carless of harming another, we share in this behavior. When we act heedless of the impact on children and grandchildren, whether our own or another's, we are being parasitic.

The individuals described above as true predators -- caretakers -- are role models. Their ability to transcend their own small lives in order to create an environment in which others can grow and prosper makes them transcendent humans who have risen above their barbarism into an evolved state of compassion worthy of a bodhisattva.

Come to know your own inner parasite. Come to know yourself well enough, honestly enough to recognize this creature when it pops its selfish little head up for air.

Why should you do this? The reward will be that you will instantly recognize other parasites. You will stop buying their products and voting for them. You will then insist that your government pursue and prosecute the parasites who rape our environment, who rob senior citizens of their pensions and your children of their future. You can thus help to create a better world for all of us, a sustainable world.