Conflicts of Interest:

>It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of conflicts of interest. One has only to read a newspaper or a news magazine, or listen to his associates discussing what they regard as the significant issues of the day, to realize that nearly all that is newsworthy involves conflicts of interest. However massive may be the areas of thought and action on which all people everywhere may truly agree, it is their areas of disagreement and contention which remain as the cutting edge of strife, risk, and danger to individuals and societies the world over. It is conflicts of interest that people write about, worry over, and ponder most intensely, that fill the literature and all forms of the condensed versions of life that in the broad sense can be called "theater." It is how we deal with conflicts of interest that will determine the fate of the world and the future of humanity.<

The biology of moral systems
Richard D. Alexander (1987)