What a wonderful world it would be if the simplistic view were accurate: that human beings need only negative consequences to teach them hard lessons. Then any number of fast-food franchises would be tickets to bankruptcy, the TV room would be a deserted spot in our homes, and the Portland Hotel could reinvent itself as something more lucrative: perhaps a luxury housing unit with Mediterranean pretensions for downtown yuppies, similar to the sold-out Firenze and España condo developments still under construction around the corner.
