Business

At the root of our concept of business is competition. It is celebrated in America. The American spirit is commonly defined as one of healthy competition. The idea being that competition spurs innovation, and will ultimately lead to the best ideas and practices rising to the top. Only the companies with the ideas, products, and systems of the highest quality will gain a share of the market.

That is a very romantic concept of business. Unfortunately, I don’t perceive it as being that simple. Most businesses probably do operate pretty close to these noble principles, but most businesses in America are quite small. Being a small business owner myself and knowing quite a few others, I’d say that most operate on the above stated principles. The better the service or product, the more success they find.

My issue with business comes from big business in America. The businesses that have captured the markets of communication, technology, energy, insurance, and transportation – businesses that we have no choice but to use. These are the nationwide businesses that have only a small handful of ‘competitors’. They are not monopolies but oligopolies. There isn’t just one business dominating the market, but there are so few that they can essentially operate with impunity.

This isn’t an accusation of collusion, but rather the natural order of business on a grand scale and over time. It is in the spirit of competition, but instead of innovating they are making concessions. The idea being that when one company innovates then the rest must mimic that innovation in order to retain market shares. But what happens when instead of innovation the company starts making ethical concessions?

When one company outsources their service staff to save money, then the other companies will need to follow suit in order to stay competitive. When a company changes their raw materials suppliers away from countries with strong environmental and labor regulations to one that has weaker regulations then the other companies follow that model to remain competitive.

Imagine these ethical compromises over the course of three quarters of a century. Now one can see how we can be left with a business model that is selecting for business practices that are harmful to society as opposed to helpful. This model is selecting for practices that diminish human value and further compromise the delicate balance of the planet.

There was a time not so long ago where even American businesses had quite a bit of ethics built into their business model. The boom of the post-WWII America was a landscape lush with workers, raw materials, and distribution capabilities. It was also peopled by a population that had a sense of national community. An entire nation had just come together in a war effort to defeat the Nazis and the fascist regimes of the world. There was a sense of ‘we are all in this together’ and to take advantage of another American was seen as unethical.

In the post war era the CEO-to-worker pay gap was about 15-1. Today that same pay gap is about 350-1. Also during that time neighborhoods became more and more separated by class. No longer were the laborers and high-level management living in the same community. Over time that sense of national community waned.

As the business of the post-war era moved forward into the 60s, 70s, and 80s the techniques and methods of competition were refined. They got so efficient that companies needed to start finding more creative ways at saving money. As the personal and communal bonds between class began to sever so did the sense of ethical responsibilities of the management class.

Also by this point the first generation of post-war managers was retiring and giving way to the next generation. The communal and ethical mores of the retiring generation was handing control to a business-school-taught generation. A generation that learned their code of ethics from a book as opposed to real-world experience.

This new generation did not view the working class in the same light that the previous generation had. Small concession after small ethical concession continued over the subsequent decades. The ‘greed is good’ mantra captured the ethos of the 1980’s. That mindset along with gutted regulations, diminished labor unions, and the acceptance of the concept of ‘trick-down-economics’ further separated the working class from the managerial class.

A lot has changed since the 1980s, but the zeitgeist of that decade carried on into the tech explosion of the past 30 years. These new Goliaths of global capital operated on a foundation that didn’t even have a foot in the ethical foundation of the past. As Facebook’s original motto went, ‘move fast and break things.’ This was a new frontier and the standards of the past were long gone. The tech world was ready to stress the foundation of our institutions beyond what they had been stressed before.

The other businesses were forced to follow suit. If this was the new model then they needed to align with it. Big business was no longer concerned with the citizens living within the national borders of where it operates. Soon businesses had only one responsibility and that was to maximize profits year over year for shareholders. The workforce they rely on for resource acquisition, production, and distribution became seen as obstacles to profit as opposed to key components in the success of the company.

This is America and we are a country of business. It is how we define ourselves in the current era. There’s little we can do about this except start to factor business ethics into our buying decisions. We’ve become accustomed to only factoring monetary price into our purchasing decisions. To start combating this issue we must start considering other factors when we open our wallets.

The only way to force a change is to support the people and businesses that are trying to do it right. It just might mean that our dollar won’t go as far. I’m hopeful that we can get there, but I’m also realistic. Getting less for your dollar is a tall order in America. But we will get something that is much more valuable than whatever it is we are purchasing. We can perhaps start buying back some of our ethics and humanity.

I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found value in this.
Thanks for reading and take care of each other.