"Undershaft & Lazarus: Influence Bought & Sold"
One thing which reviewers and critics tend to miss, reducing Shaw's Major Barbara to mentally-manageable cartoons, is that it isn't as simple as Mr. Undershaft being an arms manufacturer and dealer - it's explicitly stated that his company's *real* business, and menace, is in bankrolling countries and warlords and supporting both sides of every conflict with money even more than materiel.
And this is what is also significant about the giving of massive bribes to peole like Cunninghan and Harris by people like Wade of MZM, regardless of other laundering possibilities - it's the same of Delay spreading it around to *my* congresscritters. The money doesn't just enrich them personally, and it doesn't *just* help them get relected, either. They spread it further downstream, indebting yet *other* congresscritters and political appointees to them, strengthening their own powerbases, making them more favorable persons to support, and allowing them to sponsor still other supporters - who are vulnerable to their leaning-on now, and thus up the stream, to which ever modern RL version of Undershaft Inc. is supplying the funds ultimately.
See, trickledown economics *does* work!
At least until you get caught. And in so far as you're caught...
And this is what is also significant about the giving of massive bribes to peole like Cunninghan and Harris by people like Wade of MZM, regardless of other laundering possibilities - it's the same of Delay spreading it around to *my* congresscritters. The money doesn't just enrich them personally, and it doesn't *just* help them get relected, either. They spread it further downstream, indebting yet *other* congresscritters and political appointees to them, strengthening their own powerbases, making them more favorable persons to support, and allowing them to sponsor still other supporters - who are vulnerable to their leaning-on now, and thus up the stream, to which ever modern RL version of Undershaft Inc. is supplying the funds ultimately.
See, trickledown economics *does* work!
At least until you get caught. And in so far as you're caught...