the janet yellen speech buckraking contretemps is not only a perfect illustration of the ethical bankruptcy of the elite classes but also a useful indicator of how many people will just defend whatever because "their team" does it

every time these reports have come out about high-level democrats making bank by running "consultancies" or "giving speeches" the same defenses come out: you're doing purity politics by demanding that people stop "participating in society"

with yellen of course there's the "it's actually woke yasss kween feminism" angle, which is completely bogus because the same reports have come out about a ton of people not just this year but all the time

"actually janet yellen's wisdom is worth $100k for an hour long speech"

come the fuck on, nothing anyone can say in an hour is worth that money. if you sincerely believe this you're a fucking rube

the people who run goldman sachs aren't paying for an econ lesson, they're paying to make sure the next time they need the ear of treasury, they have it. how is this not the most obvious thing in the world?

how can you live in 2020 and still believe that influence is purchases via a novelty oversize bag with $$$ written on it in exchange for a signed contract to do wall st.'s bidding. do you have object permanence? can i show you a trick where i steal your nose?

what's incredible is that today saying things like this is taken to be an indicator of rigid leftist purism or whatever, but it's just absolutely bog-standard good-gov't liberalism! this used to be common sense on the center left!

"but she's a private citizen"

literally not one single person who invited janet yellen to speak in, say, 2018, ever believe that she was anything but a potential sec. treasury in waiting. if they claim to have believed otherwise they are lying

"but everyone does it"

yes! that is the problem! it is on some level a mistake to call this "corruption" which implies a perversion of the rightful order. this *is* the order! this is just taken to be normal at those levels of influence

the fact that "giving speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars because allegedly that is the hard-won price of your wisdom" is just accepted as how things are is precisely the issue at hand. no one should be giving those speeches!

like yes on some level if you're not raking the bucks you are indeed the sucker but no one is asking dr. yellen, phd yale econ, to live in a barrel and wear a hairshirt. she's not exactly going to end up in the street for lack of opportunity

if your principles are "it's actually fine when I/people I like are doing it" then you don't have principles, you just have opportunistically shifting opinions. a normal person who isn't some beltway slug will immediately understand this

anyway the larger problem here is again the system whereby the people at the top echelons of government are constantly being plied with favors by those they are supposed to regulate and indeed often doing the plying themselves

call it the revolving door, call it regulatory capture, whatever, but it sucks genuine ass and if you care about government efficacy in america you should want to abolish this system even if it means that janet yellen might have to retire on a slightly smaller fortune

idk i guess i can take the venality because after all whomst among us has not dreamed of making a ton of money to do fuck all. what depresses me is the intellectual dishonesty of it all. like just say that corruption is good and that you like it