Gibbeting

Herodotus told us that the Persian ruler Xerxes, son of Darius I, King of Kings, commanded for the Spartan rear guard at the Hot Gates to lay down their arms and armor, that they would be spared and rewarded. Xerxes boasted an army larger than thought possible, so large it "drank the rivers dry" and whose arrows could blot of the sun. Persia was a foreign power in Greece, had allied with many Greek city-states already, and was no stranger to punishing rebellious states in their possession. Sparta at this time was no legend, merely a rival to Athens and who had never a chance to stop a Persian army by land. We are told in this most ancient moment, between the foreign conqueror of the Orient and the valiant defender of the West, that Xerxes was not only rebuffed, but done so with ease. King Leonidas responded to the request to lay down his arms with molon labe  – "come and take them." The pithy response, that which Sparta lends its name to the term "laconic,...

beg the question, when are these things at odds with ethics? Most problems with Greater Economics come from people who see Ceteris Paribus as something that they begrudgingly accept with the truth, as opposed to being the equivalent of peering into a parallel reality through smoked glass. What a man wants is a wife, children, and bread to eat at dinnertime. He wants spiritual fulfillment and security. Indeed, a man has desires, but they serve only as means to these ends. Ambition, even change for his environment, are enveloped by this doctrine. A man would be willing to lay down his life for one of these and nothing else. So therefore a man, before he is a consumer, is a laborer, because it is only by our labor do we ensure these things for ourselves. Yet, as it stands, a man makes decisions in the free market  as a consumer. The capital-owner makes his decisions coldly in that they serve consumers before laborers. Yes indeed, they are the same, but in different worlds entire...