This is not the first time the nation has produced dramatic economic inequalities. What are very wealthy people like? The everyday world of work vs. values of democracy. How assumption of self-interest leads to fear in the workplace. Freedom, the illusion of freedom, coercion. Exploitation. Credit cards. Debt. Meritocracy. Sociopath. Environment. Corporations and the economic justification for the damage they do. Historically we are emerging from an era with no clear ideology, but an era in which materialism and business has expanded powerfully and internationally, and out of the vacuum too old, discredited ideologies, laissez-faire and Social Darwinism appears to be rising again in modern guise. These ideologies are still flawed; the first (contained in modern Libertarianism) vigorously promotes freedom but ignores justice and is indifferent toward democracy. The second is supported by science, is disinterested in humane values and accommodates exploitation as part of the nature of things.
Is exploitation wrong? The free market conceals a cultural contradiction: the everyday workplace vs. democracy. How can we hope to export democracy if we don’t have it?
Our economic theory is antiquated and we need to step a little closer to modern reality. What motivates people in today’s society: is it the pursuit of happiness, or is it surviving in an endless round of work-and-debt? Or is it the avoidance of fear? Is this a society of individuals rationally maximizing happiness? At least among the disadvantaged, it is a political economy of hope and fear.
Despite setbacks, the economy is ever expanding, its power is unparalleled, and we are now spreading free market capitalism around the globe, bringing unimagined wealth and improvement to mud-level nations and countries sucked out by socialism, raising everybody, because that’s what capitalism does. Today, as the free market continues its global advance, the values of democracy are being torn. Has everybody been raised here?
We barely notice because we are adjusted. But if you are a foreign visitor to one of the developed western World, North American country, how does this nation show? A svelte Scottsdale, of course. Disneyland, of course. The flamboyant homes of the film stars. Lavish Marin County neighborhoods (some of the least affordable rents).
Gap between rich and poor is widening. Rich is becoming richer and the poor poorer. Common person; who struggles to put food on the table is suffering the most. It has become harder and harder to meet the ends. Crimes, murders, robbery etc are everywhere; we hear and see in media everyday in the news headlines. Frauds are much more than ever before.
Actually, with talk of equality written into this nation’s founding papers, the scenery never looks right. The contrast between rich and poor grows, and this year has been no exception. As an acquaintance on the street puts it: every year there are more homeless people and every year the limousines get longer.
If the stated goal of the system was to gradually create inequality, it might also claim success.
The major Musculature of our modern free markets is corporations. They deserve attention. From the start corporations were peculiarities, being bodies that are split into two parts. Directors and managers run the firms, but stockholders own them. And the stockholders are an ever shifting bunch, being owners today, sellers tomorrow.
Most stockholders have no interest in how the firm does business. They only look at the daily value of the stock. Since the only business of a corporation is to make profit, this is a recipe for corruption, because the stock's value can fluctuate on rumor and reputation, and a firm might grow wealthy on lies, or by overcharging, or by selling a dangerous product, or by not doing anything except issuing promises, and the stockholders are just as delighted. Stockholders don’t ask questions.
Yes, there are some corporation CEOs who exercise morality and judgment. But they are not supported by Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, who believes the only moral duty of the corporation is to put profit over social and environmental goals (and business guru Peter Drucker thinks likewise). Bakan likens corporations to psychopaths (sociopaths). For his book he interviewed Dr. Robert Hare, a psychologist and expert on psychopathy, to get a list of personality traits that psychopaths exhibit (no empathy, asocial behaviors, manipulative ness, no conscience, and no remorse) and then tries those out on corporations. They fit. For instance corporations return repeatedly to make profits from things they know are lethal and that strew grief - cigarettes, cars that catch fire in crashes, drugs with devastating side effects - because the money is there. Enough money gives them a “psychopathic contempt for legal constraint.” Or any constraint. Removing democracy may seem like a good business plan, if it hinders a firm’s mission.
In corporate culture there is an emerging social order that is wide and dangerous, as dangerous as any fundamentalism, Bakan states. “For in a world where anything or anyone can be owned, manipulated, and exploited for profit, everything and everyone will eventually be.”
Every corporation’s Achilles heel is concealed in its original incorporation papers.
Yes, there are some corporation CEOs who exercise morality and judgment. But they are not supported by Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, who believes the only moral duty of the corporation is to put profit over social and environmental goals (and business guru Peter Drucker thinks likewise). Bakan likens corporations to psychopaths (sociopaths). For his book he interviewed Dr. Robert Hare, a psychologist and expert on psychopathy, to get a list of personality traits that psychopaths exhibit (no empathy, asocial behaviors, manipulative ness, no conscience, and no remorse) and then tries those out on corporations. They fit. For instance corporations return repeatedly to make profits from things they know are lethal and that strew grief - cigarettes, cars that catch fire in crashes, drugs with devastating side effects - because the money is there. Enough money gives them a “psychopathic contempt for legal constraint.” Or any constraint. Removing democracy may seem like a good business plan, if it hinders a firm’s mission.
In corporate culture there is an emerging social order that is wide and dangerous, as dangerous as any fundamentalism, Bakan states. “For in a world where anything or anyone can be owned, manipulated, and exploited for profit, everything and everyone will eventually be.”
