In a society where money is everything, people will do anything to get it. It's not that the rules have changed,its that people no longer have any shame. They will do ANYTHING to get riches that is not illegal (and crriminals don't even care about that). We have made it OK to commodify everything, so the legal system has become a business, and it has bred its own entrepreneurs and tycoons: lawyers.

Lawsuits are necesssary because it gives little people access to justice. But when they become an end in themselves, they become corrupt. This commodification, or tendency to turn all human activity and culture into commercial transactions, has spread to all aspects of human and civil life.

We've certainly seen it in finance. Finance and banking are a useful and worthwhile commercial activity, they provide bootstrap funding for new enterprises by giving businessmen today access to tomorrow's profits. In this way, the future can "reach back in time" to help build its own foundation in the past. But when debt becomes a commodity, an end in itself, to be trafficked and marketed, we develop a shadow economy that drains capital and talent and produces nothing, and not being fully responsive to market forces, can easily oscillate wildly out of control.

And we have all seen what money has done to politics. Legislation and policy have become commodities, to be bought and sold.

Money has always made the world go round, but we have created a society where money is no longer a means to an end, but an end in itself. It is no longer a medium of exchange, its become the way we keep score. And everyone has forgotten how much fun just playing the game used to be.