Excerpted from Margaret Atwood's Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, pp. 16-18: (my emphasis)
The ability to size up an enemy or a prey is a common feature of the animal kingdom, but among the primates, the making of fine bigger-than and better-than distinctions when edible goodies are being divided up verges on the unnerving. In 2003, Nature magazine published an account of experiments conducted by Frans de Waal, of Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Center, and anthropologist Sarah F. Brosnan. To begin with, they taught capuchin monkeys to trade pebbles for slices of cucumber. Then they gave one of the monkeys a grape--viewed by the monkeys as more valuable--for the very same pebble. "You can do it twenty-five times in a row, and they are perfectly happy getting cucumber slices," said de Waal. But if a grape was substituted--thus unfairly giving one monkey a better pay packet for work of equal value--the cucumber-receivers got upset, began throwing pebbles out of the cage, and eventually refused to cooperate. And the majority of the monkeys got so angry if one of them was given a grape for no reason that some of them stopped eating. [...]
Among the hunting chimpanzees, the one strongest in personality and physique typically gets more, but all who have joined in the hunt receive at least something, which is pretty much the same principle used by Genghis Khan for doling out the results of his conquering, slaughtering, looting activities among his allies and troops. Those who express surprise at winning political parties for their porkbarrelling and favoritism might keep this in mind: if you don't share out, those folks won't be there when you need them. At the very least, you have to give them some cucumber slices, and avoid giving grapes to their rivals.
Goldman Sachs, the Genghis Khan of investment banks, is paying its own tribe very handsomely after this blowout quarterly earnings ($11B allocated for bonuses). But $GS employees were not the only ones involved in the survivability of this esteemed tribe. Hence, questionable dealings notwithstanding, the backlash. Taxpayers want, at the very least, a "thank you," not a "fuck you." It literally would have cost them nothing to do this. Tsk-tsk.
And echoed here by Allan Sloan, Fortune magazine's senior editor at large.
Oct 5, 2009 at 03:04PM 
