I should've known better than to invest in dot-com stocks. After all, I work in this industry, so I know damned well that 99.995% of Internet ventures are the result of shrewd geeks playing on the greed of ignorant venture capitalists—but I figured the latter were an infinite resource, so I ended up taking a bath. Now, my broker's trying to hype me on the biotech sector, but I'm having an ethical dilemma over whether it's "right" to turn a profit off of pure evil ...

... other than by selling banner ads.

It really doesn't make much sense to me to invest in companies that are trying to do good things for humanity, like curing AIDS or cancer—because the second they make it work, the government will declare the product to be an "essential public resource" and take it away from the inventor (screwing everyone who paid for the multi-billion-dollar research), so that they can hire their favorite defense contractors to manufacture it at fifteen times the cost and levy taxes on straights and nonsmokers to pay for the treatment of others who didn't exercise as much common sense in their choice of lifestyle.

Doesn't government do anything else?

So I figure it's probably OK to invest in frivolous biotech—diet pills, penis creme, monkeys with three buttocks. As with the Internet, the dumber the idea, the more money the VCs will throw at it, and the better the chances it will actually make someone rich. Seriously. Thomas Edison lived in a shack, the Curies never tasted foie gras, and Albert Einstein couldn't even afford a decent haircut—but the hucksters who came up with the flowbee, Rotato, and the Wacky Wall Walker are kicking back in Palm Beach.

... what does that say about civilization?