FINANCIAL INCENTIVES FOR BIG BUSINESS TO DESTROY SOCIETY
Selfishness and societal destruction as fiduciary responsibility
when the profits of a few are privileged over the needs of everyone else, when the only purpose of business is defined as the fiduciary responsibility of making as much money as possible for owners and investors with no regard whatsoever for the effects on society, that logically and inevitably leads to very cruel outcomes for large numbers of people and the destruction of society.
Business maximizes its profits by keeping costs low and charging as much as possible. There is absolutely no responsibility to the society at large. If maximizing profits is destructive to society, so be it.
---When we say business we are talking about the owners, investors and top executives, not workers--
There is a huge difference between big business and small business. Small business is inherently more human. When the owner is working in the business side by side with their employees s/he often forms a personal relationship and is far more likely to value the people working with and for them.
The abuses of people and society usually come from a huge corporate structure with 10 levels between the top executive making the decisions and the person on the bottom. An impersonal, heartless structure with no personal relationships between the people making the decisions and 95% of the people affected by them.
Almost all the things I am talking about in this piece are about big business, which I am defining as a business that can move to a different geographical area, including overseas. This is not about book stores and restaurants.
Big business is inherently heartless.
Big business is bad business.
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A) Keeping Labor Costs Low
* hiring as few people as possible at
*as low a wage as possible,
*automating and
*offshoring as many jobs as possible.
Minimum Wage
whenever the topic of raising the minimum wage comes up conservatives always say that it will cost jobs because then business is more incentivized to take their jobs to another country.
This is true.
By this logic we should lower the minimum wage to $1 an hour. That truly would create millions of jobs, not that anyone could survive at current levels of prices.
Some think that if we just give enough tax breaks and subsidies to businesses that will create jobs. That is a fantasy. They just take advantage of it for the moment because the financial incentive is to take advantage of every program possible and give as little as possible in return
B) Prices
charging as much as possible, especially for basic necessities that people have very little choice about, especially housing and healthcare.
An honest profit
Certainly business needs and is entitled to make an honest profit to stay in business and to make it worthwhile for people to do business, but there is a large difference between honest profit and the heartless unscrupulous gouging so often characteristic of the pricing of people's most essential needs, particularly housing and healthcare.
C) Environment
*If it's cheaper to create an environmental disaster and pay the fine, and fines are usually minuscule in proportion to the profits, than to clean up properly, then the fiduciary responsibility is to maximize profits by doing the wrong thing.
The health costs and suffering are born by the population.
*Using up natural resources as fast as possible with all the disastrous consequences that implies such as pollution, climate change, and a whole host of other natural disasters.
The two biggest culprits in this
*Disposability
*Planned obsolescence
The financial incentives are to create lots and lots of waste
D) etc etc etc. Anyone who cares to think about it can think of many more details and examples.
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The truth is that wages and prices are always in relationship. When you have a situation where the owners of society are charging high prices and paying low wages it's just a big company town.
There are huge differences in purchasing power between the working class and the middle class. Many businesses derive the bulk of their profits from the middle class and if the working class falls into poverty it's not going to affect their bottom line much at all.
The Heart of The Matter
The heart of the matter is that when the only purpose of business is seen as making as much money as possible for the owners and investors the logic leads to very cruel outcomes for much of society.
There is a balance to be struck between rights and responsibilities. At this point there is a large imbalance in that businesses have rights without responsibilities. All the financial incentives are to do the wrong thing, to do that which harms people and society but maximizes short term profits. Aside from a few admirable individuals, most business people end up following the incentives. If they didn't they would probably lose their jobs as CEOs.
We have a culture of unrestrained selfishness in the business world. When you are maximizing your own profits without any regard whatsoever about how that is affecting society, that is selfishness in action.
Many see any regulations or restrictions on business or any requirement that they be socially responsible as an infringement on the freedom and rights of the owners. Corporate personhood is the extreme example of this, which holds that business has all the rights of a person. Of course there aren't too many people with 10,000 heads and 20,000 arms, but that doesn't seem to be an issue. In addition, a physical person can actually be put in jail and punished for misdeeds. with corporate personhood no one is personally responsible.
Business without heart is inherently selfish and destructive. That's just the logical consequence. They're going to do what's best for profits regardless of social costs.
NOT NEEDED
There is another major issue. Given that it is cheaper to automate or send jobs offshore, tens of millions of people have no place to work in the modern economy. These are primarily working-class people who in the past would have done physical labor.
Not that there aren't great needs for caregivers, more teachers, child daycare workers and the like. There are. Those fields could use millions more people working in them
But
In economy based on profit for the owner class those jobs do not generate enough money to hire those people.
Again it comes down to having all the decisions based on benefiting an ownership class as opposed to having an economy based on having a user-friendly, kind, happy and healthy society.
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As currently constituted, all the laws and structures of economic society incentivize selfishness, incentivize benefiting the few with no regard for how society can function and whether people can even have enough to eat and a roof over their head.
Criminality
If we define criminality as harming people, then
*in the absence of morality and
*in the presence of the fiduciary responsibility to make as much money as possible, and
*given that corporate personhood means that no individual is personally responsible and no matter what happens they will walk away with their golden parachutes,
then the logical conclusion is that
BIG BUSINESS IS FINANCIALLY INCENTIVIZED TO BE CRIMINAL, TO HARM SOCIETY
When there is no morality to business, when the only ethic is make as much money as possible, then the logical consequence is ruthless exploitation and destruction of society.
What needs to change is not just putting in rules and regulations. Those do need to be enacted. Any business which wants to do business in the US, especially any business doing business with the government, needs to have limits on egregious behavior, the same way we have laws against rape, murder and armed robbery. We don't make those matters of voluntary compliance. In particular top executives need to be held personally responsible for criminal behavior they have ordered or condoned.
We do need increased rules and regulations, but more than that
***What is really needed is an understanding that
As well as being for the profit of the owners
BUSINESS HAS A RESPONSIBILITY TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN OF SOCIETY
That needs to be put into law.
Bravo! It's so simple, but our leaders have made it sound so complicated.