Conservative Writers Learn About the Downside to Capitalism

This story reeks with irony:

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

Excuse me, but isn't this just an example of conservative capitalism...or as I like to call it, "Ferengism"? And by "Ferengi" I mean a people who

are characterized by a mercantile obsession with profit and trade and their constant efforts to swindle people into bad deals.

And have a culture that

is so devoted to unregulated capitalism that concepts such as labor unions, sick leave, vacations, or paid overtime for workers are considered abhorrent, because they would interfere with exploitation of workers. In addition to the Rules, the Ferengi also recognize the five Stages of Acquisition: infatuation, justification, appropriation, obsession, and resale. They value similar traits in other species as well — Earth's Wall Street is regarded with religious reverence by Ferengi, who routinely visit Earth to make pilgrimages to the "holy site" of commerce and business. (Star Trek: Voyager episode "11:59")

Back to the news story:

The authors argue that in reducing royalty payments, the publisher is maximizing its profits and the profits of its parent company at their expense.

These conservative writers aren't mad at the scheme, they're just mad that they weren't a part of it. But they shouldn't expect anything less when dealing with an organization whose goal is profit, not the well-being of their suppliers.