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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: that their claws are longer, their morality more crooked than ours,
while they have not our good points. What a head a man must have if he
has to found a business in times when the shareholder is as covetous
and keen as the inventor! What a great magnetizer must he be that can
create a Claparon and hit upon expedients never tried before! Do you
know the moral of it all? Our age is no better than we are; we live in
an era of greed; no one troubles himself about the intrinsic value of
a thing if he can only make a profit on it by selling it to somebody
else; so he passes it on to his neighbor. The shareholder that thinks
he sees a chance of making money is just as covetous as the founder
that offers him the opportunity of making it."
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