This is a much-needed conversation.

Definitely, agree entirely that our country no longer embraces the concept of the common good, that it is no longer a part of our ethic.

defJef @ 334

… But the lack of an on-going dialogue about … national priorities and national ethics have undermined this mixed system to a point where it has been gamed and abused by a minority without any ethics and only themselves as a priority.

… A corporation is only as evil as the management that runs it, and the laws or lack thereof that regulate it.

…But maybe that’s what has been very wrong with how we accumulate capital in this country…; we don’t talk about this necessary balancing act, don’t talk regularly about ethics at personal, community and national level.

…Most of this country’s business is really small-mom-and-pop business, not McDonald’s or WalMart; I’d hate to see mom-and-pop lumped in with the hyper-corporations when mom-and-pop have historically been the engine of prosperity in this country.

Rayne,

If by any chance you come back to read this, I just want to say that I found your comments a huge breath of fresh air and have excerpted the points that resonated most strongly.

I think the national conversation has been winnowed to a sound-bite, he-said/she-said, shrill, spin-the-wheels cacaphony that has been almost impossible to listen to. Like a high-pitched whine, you just can’t really stand to listen to it because it is so wrapped in moralistic, sophomoric flag-drenched (almost pugilistic) unctiousness. It’s like listening to a buzz-saw, and it urgently needs to be a quieter conversation.

As for all the larger corporations that are so enabled by the federal tax codes, I’d sure like to know the percentage of ownership by US citizens. The ownership isn’t motivated to support democracy or participation, particularly not when they’re NOT Americans. To make matters worse, managers are rewarded for short-term profit-taking, for bumping up stock prices and then playing the markets. Anyone who conducts themselves in a socially responsible fashion is up against tough odds IN THE SHORT TERM (3 – 6 years).

Your earlier comment, up above, that ownership doesn’t really understand its employees synchs with my observation of poorly run businesses. Show me a single good small business where the owners don’t know their employees and I will eat my hat. Good businesses care about their employees.

Agree that corporations are not inherently evil; they’re a human abstraction designed to encourage certain behaviors that CAN be socially valuable. They can also be used to shield criminal activity, which is why we need regulations and auditors.

But something dreadful happened back in the 1980s, which is when the American public (including my Boomer generation) failed to distinguish been UTILITIES and entreprenurial endeavors.

The Reagan and Bush41 era recategored many public utlities — most of them energy related – from ‘public goods’ that merited regulation, over to ‘private entities’. Reagan and Bush41 laid the groundwork for the Grand Theft we call Managerial Capitalism.

Recategoizing public utlities into ‘private corporations’ basically placed huge monopoly profits into the hands of private interests. Follow that line straight to the excesses of Enron (classic ‘managerial capitalism’) and you see the damage wrought — socially, politically, and personally. Thus, did the word ‘corporation’ become synomous with amoral depravity.

This conversation (about the linkages between economic activity and socially responsible conduct) needs to take root and get a lot more active. It’s my observation that many people have lost all grasp of what was once called a COMMON good. They can no longer distinguish between ‘collective goods’ and private enterprise. Consequently, they’ve let too much be ‘privatized,’ and are now helpless against large environmental, financial, legal, demographic, and economic forces.

I can also say that it’s been my observation that there is a strong link between moral conduct, socially responsible activity, and business success. It’s more complicated than that, but without #1 and #2, you don’t get #3. Business can be a powerful agent for making life better. But it needs certain kinds of government support and constraints to be able to work its magic.

This is a much-needed conversation.

Responding first to your comment regarding your comments on capitalism, I hope you were able to determine from my comments that I am a proponent of a mixed economy. There are times when the power of individuals to provide is exponentially increased when aggregated — thus is the nature of government, of, by and for the people. We cannot by our individual selves create police or military, but we can when aggregated. We cannot as individuals create a network of trustworthy entities that facilitate our individual needs to move money, but we can regulate groups that do so as organizations. I believe that government when acting as an aggregation of our individual desires and authority to achieve what we collectively agree is of import can be far more effective than charity or business. But government is not an end-all, be-all; our collective powers have a limit when they impinge on the rights of the individual while failing to yield greater benefit to the common, collective good. This is why socialism will not work on its own.

Capitalism has the benefit of allowing individuals to pursue that which they believe they are best suited to do (they are not forced to choose), rewarding entrepreneurs who take such risk with profit. Shares of stock in such entrepreneurial ventures are a method by which the risk of entrepreneurship is shared, as are any profits; corporate entities allow going concerns to continue beyond the life of the original entrepreneur to the benefit of those who continue the enterprise. But corporations have limits; they are established to provide goods or services at a profit, thus putting themselves in conflict with any need that is not actively benefit the corporation by recouping costs at a minimum or generating profits at a maximum. Corporations may be much faster at responding to public wants because of smaller bureaucracy and greater financial incentives, but they can be wasteful if the public is fickle or if the market does not encourage the right level of competition.

There has to be a balance between these forces; our democracy has so far through checks and balance been friable and resilient enough to maintain this creative tension in place to the benefit of most. But the lack of an on-going dialogue about the concepts that underpin these forces as well as national priorities and national ethics have undermined this mixed system to a point where it has been gamed and abused by a minority without any ethics and only themselves as a priority. This is when we as a collective must check the minority and reset the forces through legislation, increased oversight and societal dialogue. And it’s well past time to discuss our priorities, discuss what it means to be an American.

I will quibble with your perception of corporations as inherently evil — creating nothing of use to humanity. A corporation is only as evil as the management that runs it, and the laws or lack thereof that regulate it. Being a corporation myself, I object stringently to the notion that merely filing paperwork to organize business efforts under a separate entity makes me inherently evil. I provide what my Fortune 50 customer asks — and over the course of the last 3 years, I’ve had the opportunity to tell them what the public thinks about their products and what is wrong with what they are doing. It is what they do with that information that is evil or not evil. It is not that I do it as a corporation that is inherently evil.

Perhaps because you don’t have children your perception is different; I have 3 children, two of my own and a stepchild, for whom I work to amass capital. I want them to be free from worry to the point where they can concentrate on their studies, but not so free from worry that they feel entitled. I want them to learn that every decision has a repercussion, that making a decision means accepting ALL the repercussions that come with it. That means we buy local produce (to save money, get better quality, and support other small businesses); we often shop at thrift stores (to save money and to recycle while supporting a charitable organization); we talk about and choose green technologies, because choosing food, clothes, energy consumption methodologies means accepting everything that comes with it (drying clothes outside, for example, means 25% reduction in power bill along with fresher smelling clothes and less reliance on petroleum). I want them to be eager to learn and do for their own internal motivations, based on their acquired ethics, and not based on desperation. But maybe that’s what has been very wrong with how we accumulate capital in this country at family level; we don’t talk about this necessary balancing act, don’t talk regularly about ethics at personal, community and national level. And maybe that’s why you have a fundamental mistrust of all things corporate — because you personally have not been involved in creating a business, a corporation, one in which family is involved. Most of this country’s business is really small-mom-and-pop business, not McDonald’s or WalMart; I’d hate to see mom-and-pop lumped in with the hyper-corporations when mom-and-pop have historically been the engine of prosperity in this country.

I had the great fortune to take a class in economics that the lecturer produced 20 economic definitions developed through Aristotilian method of examination. Best 3 hours ever taken at university. The discussions here are not far off in arriving at economic fact and are surprisingly free of “political baggage” that usually dimminish communicating ideas. Congratulations and kudos for the effort. Great mind candy this. All the best……..

Corporations which people hold shares in do manufacture, though certainly not all. We may not be an agrarian society but we cannot live with agriculture, but that too has been turned into a corporate approach which does not benefit those who work the land… even it may those who own the shares and it certainly is not putting better food on the table.

Since the idea of ownership of a share for 99.999% of shareholders is profit or ROI it is unlikely that they will want anything which is “good”… but does not benefit their account.

Some of will not own shares of anything and we are just fine. I don’t need to pass anything along… because I don’t have children. I need to take care of myself and if we had a decent pension system etc… I could retire and life in dignity till I croak. But I will work till I croak instead.. with a clean consciience that I am not explioting a soul for my retirement account.

Sure there are some socially conscious corporations but most have no social conscience or interest in anything else but wealth creation. And this leads to abuses on all sorts of levels… the environment and the workers.

Capitalism is about capital not about creating a just and better society. Just look at the name – capitalism… that says it all.

defJef @
301

Rayne @ 156

You start by not buying or own shares. You also have to get the notion of welath aggregation and unearned income out your head. Add to that the notion of passing inheritence to future generations who become lay abouts.

People need a decent wage, reasonable compensation for their skills and a pension to see them through when they can or no longer work. Of course housing, education and health care.

Sounds too boring because all the consumerism seems to be impossible without wealth creation… but it is consumerism which has and will continue to spoil the environment.

Sorry, we’ll have to agree to disagree. Millions of people have died over centuries under the system you describe wherein people simply pull themselves up by the bootstraps and take care of themselves. We are no longer an agricultural society, nor even a manufacturing society. I continue to believe that my giving capital in exchange for ownership, to an entrepreneurial enterprise that is more effective than I am at using the money, is an important vehicle for growth.

Investment does not have to be a dirty word; look at what Grameen Bank has done. But Grameen has also relied on the investments of people who had “extra” capital to give, in order to empower microlending.

What is quite toxic and needs urgently to be changed in this country is the concept that corporations have the same or greater rights than people. In a democracy, VOTERS should have the ultimate in rights, not a legal construct that buys greater access and greater representation than the people have as citizens.

The other toxic notion is that money equals speech — this is a perversion that undermines our entire political system. As long as money equates to speech, those with more have more rights than those that have none.

Both of these toxic notions can be changed by the will of the people, if they were to not only add this to legislation, but to amend the Constitution. It was surely never the intention of the founding fathers to permit such power as money buys in this country, to be aggregated in the hands of so few.

Rayne, thank you for your comments on this issue. I never before considered that publicly traded corporations protected by limited liability could have any useful role.

I’m still not convinced (shortly after 7 on a Sunday AM, I’m still barely thinking….)

But you’ve given me a lot to think about when I wake up.

As a parent of a son studying finance at a public university, I am deeply concerned about the quality of the curriculum.

The professors partially addressed my concerns by describing the post-Enron environment relating to business ethics.

I want more progressive ideas presented as well. Thanks so much for your input here.

Rayne @ 156

You start by not buying or own shares. You also have to get the notion of welath aggregation and unearned income out your head. Add to that the notion of passing inheritence to future generations who become lay abouts.

People need a decent wage, reasonable compensation for their skills and a pension to see them through when they can or no longer work. Of course housing, education and health care.

Sounds too boring because all the consumerism seems to be impossible without wealth creation… but it is consumerism which has and will continue to spoil the environment.

Sorry, we’ll have to agree to disagree. Millions of people have died over centuries under the system you describe wherein people simply pull themselves up by the bootstraps and take care of themselves. We are no longer an agricultural society, nor even a manufacturing society. I continue to believe that my giving capital in exchange for ownership, to an entrepreneurial enterprise that is more effective than I am at using the money, is an important vehicle for growth.

Investment does not have to be a dirty word; look at what Grameen Bank has done. But Grameen has also relied on the investments of people who had “extra” capital to give, in order to empower microlending.

What is quite toxic and needs urgently to be changed in this country is the concept that corporations have the same or greater rights than people. In a democracy, VOTERS should have the ultimate in rights, not a legal construct that buys greater access and greater representation than the people have as citizens.

The other toxic notion is that money equals speech — this is a perversion that undermines our entire political system. As long as money equates to speech, those with more have more rights than those that have none.

Both of these toxic notions can be changed by the will of the people, if they were to not only add this to legislation, but to amend the Constitution. It was surely never the intention of the founding fathers to permit such power as money buys in this country, to be aggregated in the hands of so few.