Stuart Davis: Study for “Package Deal” (1956)

"Nobody Decently corners any competition."

Decency requires some hair-splitting. One must somehow manage to sustain oneself without over-reaching. Society maintains laws against monopoly because we deem SelfDealing indecent. It’s unseemly for anybody to merely compete with their own interests. It’s considered Decent to engage as a part of a system rather than as the entirety of it. Monopolists freeze others out, essentially robbing them of opportunity, however much their monopoly might resemble greater efficiency. Efficiency in the service of nobody else amounts to wasted effort. Efficient monopolies are merely rapacious.

Oligarchies are monopolies on steroids. They amount to a series of concatenated monopolies lined up to dominate an economy. They also mock efficiency more than even the most dismissive monopolist could. Oligarchs are not monarchs, nor are they citizens. They are owners hell-bent on preventing others from ever becoming owners, intent on fostering a society primarily composed of renters with no hope of ever succeeding in accumulating wealth. They pray for protection from forces that threaten their dominion. They cannot imagine how they’d survive actual competition, because they wouldn’t. The whole point of monopoly and oligarchy involves the indecency that insists that somebody must be considered superior in order for the world to work for all. The paradox comes with the realization that this belief insists that disenfranchisement must be the key to a world that works for everybody.

Selfishness seems both necessary and insufficient to support human existence. One must become selfish enough to feed themselves, for instance, without insisting that others starve so they can exercise that privilege. Likewise, the martyr commits an opposite, if equal, sin: depriving himself of essential sustenance leaves nobody any better off. The martyr takes themselves out of any potential competition, believing that the world might be better for their absence. That’s no more sustainable than any other form of extreme selfishness. The flight attendant asks that everybody put on their own oxygen mask first, not so anyone might beat the competition, but so that everyone receiving oxygen can help anyone unable to help themselves. SelfDealing smugly sits with their success strapped on while their neighbors suffocate unassisted.

SelfDealing sucks the collective oxygen out of a society. It vilifies cooperation. It diminishes competition. It perverts pretty much everything it touches once it moves beyond moderation. There was never any success like excess, because excess produces failure rather than success. Those who never learn when to say, “When!” seem destined to become tragic figures. The Midas Touch proved to be much more of a curse than a blessing. The Emperor’s haughty new suit of clothes left him naked.

The ultimate absurdity of pursuing generational wealth has never produced what its champions might have hoped. Their excesses ultimately undermined their family’s existence, spoiling the first generation before utterly ruining subsequent ones. There were only promises of privilege awaiting in Heaven. Those who actually arrived found their appetite for privilege had abandoned them in the transition from Earth to there. The privileged on Earth never deliver on their promises, either. Those who would trade for absolute advantage create, at best, a short-term reward, if even that. Anyone forced to lose will attempt a reckoning. SelfDealing creates an opposition absolutely dedicated to unseating its advantage. Because of this, it’s at best a short-sighted strategy. Nobody Decently corners any competition.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz