This is all true, Steve. But in a way we can not exclusively blame corporate greed because the relatively new kid, corporate structure, was never designed to accommodate any sort of moral conscience.
What the recent invention of corporate business entity has done is allow
standard human greed to operate at here-to-fore unheard of power levels. Corporate officers are bound by law to make decisions that benefit their stockholders in quarterly dividends if nothing else ...this quarter, not next. They must seek short term profit first and foremost, theoretically within today's willowy law.
I've seen CEO's admit on documentaries that what they did was not right. But it was what rang up the tills here and now, that fleeting ticket to the closest Pearly Gate to avoid the Hell of the Next Board and the eternal death of a career. If they could do it, they had to do it. Tremendous pressure. And why?
Because we let them.
I suggest the way to rein it in is to pass laws that limit the flexibility of corporations, or any other single large group, to dominate an economy. This suggestion constitutes a reversal of 50 years of corporate political gains. Unfortunately these necessary restrictions will immediately hinder totally free enterprise, a basic dear tenet of capitalism. The secret is balance between the needs of the whole vs. the selfish opportunities of a few very shrewd elite. Don't like overly powerful unions? Well a corporation is nothing more than a powerful union for stockholders with plenty of elite deadwood of its own.
We the people have to pass the laws and say, "These are the new rules for ethics, caveat emptor as usual, but also,
let the seller to the public beware of public harm". In other words, a limited bit of injected socialism to cool the embers of total dog-eat-dog. There will be the usual screams of pain, the lobbyists, the frantic press releases.
There is hope that McCain or Obama are on the side of Mom-and-Pop, Joe six-pack, the middle-class labor of America that pays for it all ...every single nickel of profit anywhere. (Hillary, God forbid, is as pro-corporate as anything we've had for well over 15 years ...years of having our fate, and our children's fate, decided in a boardroom.)
Are we in lethal trouble? Is it too late for America? Not if we still produce, not if we still consume, not if we still trade in spite of a corrupt political system that unequally divides the pie. The danger is when we quit producing. The danger is when those that did produce believe they can no longer carry the burden of freeloaders ...and stop. Where will the pie come from then?
The lack of incentive in pure capitalism can be as great as the lack of incentive in pure socialism.
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