“Caringabout people,” she corrects, “is not a negative.”
“Respect is more important than care.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Have you not actually read your Friedman, Miss Marwan?” he asks, unkind smile. It hurts, how he doesn’t say her name. His disdain—cold amusement, devoid of any usual affection—enrages her. “His fundamental value isn’t to do good unto others, it’s to not force them to do good.”
Lili scoffs. “That’s bullshit—”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” James mutters, throwing back the rest of his champagne.
“—and it’s just a weak excuse to let free-market libertarianism runrampant. As a country, we’re still in thrall to the ideas of a few old white men.”
“I see,” Aleksandr says. “If we had it your way, we’d have bombed out the University of Chicago in the seventies. Clean break.”
“Well, you know what they say,” she bites back. “The trolley problem isn’t just a thought experiment.”
“So, let’s kill the intellectuals, before they say anything contentious? That sounds familiar.”
She hates it—how he pushes her statements to distortion, make them sound fucking ridiculous. “Friedman unleashed profit monomania,” Lili grits out. “He convinced you all that corporations only have a responsibility to shareholders.”
“Yes?”
“That’s immoral!” she exclaims. “Letting corporations run wild while government steps back!”
“Your argument is entirely unclear. Corporations or state, which is responsible for the common good?”
“You can’t just extricate them—we need government to actually be a government, but that doesn’t, like,absolvecorporations of social responsibility!”
“Our government spent nearly seven trillion last year, yet we continue to demand CEOs fix the world as a side project. Is it because they’re the only leaders we have who’ve actually accomplished anything?”
Her eyes widen. “That’s some of the most arrogant, self-aggrandizing—”
“Now, Lili,” George cuts in, stern. “That’s rather—”
“Donotinterrupt her,” Aleksandr snarls, glaring at him.
The air changes, then. A shift in posture among the group. Confusion narrows in people’s stares, a reexamination of her—and him, the two of them—but Lili brushes right past it.
“You realize corporations have always been creatures of the state?” she asks. “Relaxed taxation, the government’s intentional laissez-faire approach—corporations are completely the product of state intervention.”
“That logic is shaky, but I’ll allow it, for argument’s sake.”
He’ll fuckingallowit? “Limited liability is a privilege granted by the state,” Lili snaps. “It’d never arise in a truly free market.”
“I am not an anarchist, Miss Marwan,” he replies, glancing at the others—at Kara—with a knowing look of cruel amusement.
“No, just a capitalist deep-throating for the sake of next week’s stock price.”
“Lili!” It’s Meredith, aghast.
But Aleksandr gives a harsh laugh. “If you cared to actually research, you’d know we’re committed to long-term growth, not easy, short-term returns.”
“Yes, that you’re funding with Saudi blood money.”
“Don’t be so reductive.”
“Don’t be such a capitalist pig!”
