Drug dealing and honest work -- same thing, really

We all know that things are tough at Fairfax these days, but just how tough only became apparent with this morning's perusal of the insights available at Daily Life, where moonlighting Radio National web editor Daniel Stacey explains why the TV series Breaking Bad is so much more than a show about a man whose moral flaws become fissures. Stacey is one deep thinker, that's for sure.

"The show resonates because Walter White’s journey towards moral annihilation describes, albeit in hyperbolic form, the experience awaiting anyone joining the modern workplace."

"Breaking Bad illustrates the devil's bargain all young people face, entering a jobs market where most of the outcomes their work will create–pollution, inequality, misinformation, division–are at odds with their personal morality."

"The gangster metaphor plays to Gandhi’s observation that a society should be judged by how it treats its weakest members. Society allows that many of the poor are forced to sell addictive, harmful products to make a living, and compete for clients in never ending bloody turf wars. Is it any surprise then that at the big end of town the same thing happens with oil – where the addiction is structured into the economy, the harm global, and the turf wars, well… wars?"

"...the way to get wealth and power isn't to carry out humble teaching or police work, it's to find employment in jobs that serve profit and ignore consequence. For White that job is cooking meth, for the rest of us it means working for companies that pollute the environment, feed people products that kill them, and shear off mountain tops to generate power for air-conditioning units in the suburban homes in which we raise our children."

And finally, this gem: 

"There is a shade of Walter White in all of us when we try and hide, excuse and eventually give up justifying the negative work we do. When we work for and consume the products of companies that contribute to anthropogenic climate change, sweatshops, obesity, diabetes, species extinction, conflict and hate, and pretend that these outcomes will never come back to harm our families or haunt us in the suburban Arcadias we're so obsessed with building (and fleeing to)."

As noted, things must really be bad at Fairfax, where the stock of resident idiots has now fallen so low they have had to borrow one from the ABC. Because Stacey does not have one of those squalid, profit-oriented jobs -- the ABC is good like that -- he can opine on the moral fitness of others with   absolute confidence. Then he can post another Phillip Adams audio, loiter at the bicycle rack or write his next contribution for Daily Life.

As for the rest of us, out there working for the man, why, we're no better than ice dealers!

A FURTHER THOUGHT:  When we get the long overdue inquiry into the ABC -- a Royal Commission, preferably -- one term of reference needs to be the way in which the ABC goes about filling vacancies. The paper trail that led to Stacey's current position might provide some fascinating insights.