Corporations Are *Not* Evil
Aug. 1st, 2014 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribIn one of his many, many and quite lengthy rants, John C. Wright advises us that "leftists hate corporations" and that we think "corporations are evil." Well, no, not really.
On the other hand, nobody at GM sat around stroking a white cat and saying "let's kill some customers." Nobody on the Titanic said "let's sink this boat and drown a thousand people." In the current Hachette / Amazon scuffle, neither side is saying "let's screw authors!" Yet, decisions have been or are being made to cause those various bad effects.
This is largely because the human beings at those entities making the decisions are doing so based on what is perceived to serve their interests best in the short term. Now, corporations have no monopoly on short-term and self-centered thinking. However, safety costs money, and costs reduce profits. Protecting the interests of vendors is simply not part of the DNA of business. In short, the incentives of any for-profit enterprise are to skimp on safety and screw vendors.
In addition, corporations tend to have diffuse decision-making processes. Again, no one person at GM or on the Titanic made a "smoking gun" decision. But various people at various times made decisions that resulted in the bad effects noted. So, corporations aren't evil, but neither are they good.
James Madison, in writing the Constitution, wanted to pit faction against faction in government, assuming that a healthy competition between the groups would keep things more or less down the middle. I would submit that a healthy competition between government and corporations (and labor and individuals) would accomplish the same goal.
On the other hand, nobody at GM sat around stroking a white cat and saying "let's kill some customers." Nobody on the Titanic said "let's sink this boat and drown a thousand people." In the current Hachette / Amazon scuffle, neither side is saying "let's screw authors!" Yet, decisions have been or are being made to cause those various bad effects.
This is largely because the human beings at those entities making the decisions are doing so based on what is perceived to serve their interests best in the short term. Now, corporations have no monopoly on short-term and self-centered thinking. However, safety costs money, and costs reduce profits. Protecting the interests of vendors is simply not part of the DNA of business. In short, the incentives of any for-profit enterprise are to skimp on safety and screw vendors.
In addition, corporations tend to have diffuse decision-making processes. Again, no one person at GM or on the Titanic made a "smoking gun" decision. But various people at various times made decisions that resulted in the bad effects noted. So, corporations aren't evil, but neither are they good.
James Madison, in writing the Constitution, wanted to pit faction against faction in government, assuming that a healthy competition between the groups would keep things more or less down the middle. I would submit that a healthy competition between government and corporations (and labor and individuals) would accomplish the same goal.
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Date: 2014-08-01 06:44 pm (UTC)The ironic thing was some of the executives who had driven the culture to cut in places like that were on the plane with their families coming back from a junket to Cabo...