Shame and Power, and the morality of Staying Wealthy

I wrote about shame being one of Malaysia's cultural weaknesses. 

There are probably some good examples of morality which don't involve shame. But many moralities depend on shame, and so many moralities share the same sort of weakness. One variety of morality is ethics of amassing power and/or material goods ( without detailed definitions it is not possible to simply call this Capitalism, so here I will not ). 

So when we look for shameful people, firstly we often find them among the moralist, and secondly we often find them among the rich and powerful.

Meanwhile it is always a rare privilege to encounter someone who does not feel shame no matter what they do, or how others regard them. That is the privilege of the shameless.

The morality of the wealthy is often misunderstood.

A naive moralist might say, that someone is immoral because they break laws - but this is just a disagreement about whose laws are more important.

The morality of wealth is actually : that it is good to be powerful, and shameful to be powerless. That is why wealthy moralists try to stay wealthy, and consider it immoral to cede control. This is a well-known moral code which is not often discussed as a moral code. It is simply practiced to a great degree of strictness.