There are a lot of things I know nothing about, but having a blog means I get to talk about them anyway. I may not have an audience, but I have a soapbox.
The world of politics is pretty much a closed book to me, and my ignorance extends to corporate politics, too, and everywhere else it's practiced. I was never good at politics, never interested in playing it, but enjoy it as an academic pursuit when it doesn't enrage me.
Same with economics.
It may be ironic, or some other word, that two of the bigger forces in my daily life are of so little interest to me, but that's the way it is. I happen to believe that politicians, whether or not I share their beliefs, aren't evil, that they're honestly trying to do what they think best. I think often, as with our current administration, they're wrong, but I don't think they're engaged in a conscious plan to ruin everything.
It's the same with businesses.
Lots of businessman do many shady, horrible, unethical things, but I don't think corporations are inherently evil no matter how much disdain I have for them. The reason for this is that corporations are run by people, and while greed is fairly evenly disbursed across the human race, I think corporations are interested in making money more than anything else. They're not out to rule the world for nefarious purposes, only to make the most money possible.
I don't agree with their ends, rarely with their means, and I fully subscribe to the idea that whenever you think any company is doing anything for your interest, you're wrong. Still, they're run by people, and I don't think people are evil as much as misguided.
I don't believe in many conspiracy theories, either. Anything can be hinted at if you can pick and choose your facts and explanations for them. There are, and have been times, when people conspire, but I don't think it happens as often as some do. I've attended my share of meetings, and getting more than two people to agree on lunch is difficult enough.
Worse is my belief that some shit just happens. I think chaos explains as much as cause and effect, and one of the least-used words in the world is "happenstance."
I believe in random occurrences, in the universal desires of being happy and caring, and that most people sincerely want to do what they feel is right.
Call me Pollyanna.
Economic Naivete
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8 comments:
As a matter of corporation law, business corporations are born, live and die as sociopathic entities. I don't mean this in a figurative sense.
They have one purpose, to make money, and more money, for their shareholders. Generally, corporations have no legal capacity to be nice or mean. People who are "hired by the corporation," from the Directors and CEO on down, must take their lead from the sociopathic entity, on pain of either getting removed or fired.
Everyone who acts through the corporation can have no intent other than what the corporation provides. People in corporations can't act on behalf of the company like "normal human beings" as a matter of the corporation laws of the incorporating jurisdiction (state, federal), and the company's own articles of incorporation, constitution, and by-laws etc. It simply isn't accounted for, and therefore not permitted.
So, for example, companies give to charities, obey the laws of the land (theoretically), and do other human-like things strictly because they are seen as opportunities of improving or preserving the bottom line (Public Relations, tax laws, etc.) I'm not being cynical here, and I'm not saying anything philosophical. This is just a statement of legal reality. Jurisdictions (your politicians) don't (won't) in fact legislate that all business corporations inherently be good corporate citizens and have a social conscience. (They could but then you guys would likely be involved in another revolution or civil war if they tried. They ain't stupid, and besides, they like the social power that comes with handing gobs of money around.)
This fact of corporate life persists because "capitalism" happens to love the sociopathic nature of corporations, four car garages and the possibility of owning beach front properties and Humvies and seeing their daughters safe and married well - so the situation with companies isn't likely to change any time this century (assuming humanity survives that long).
These days, legislators and regulators make laws for both people and corporations, etc, to heed because, in the end, people cannot always be trusted to act (or in the case of corporations, can't otherwise act) socially responsible or decently. I think it all can make for a shitty world, of course, but there ya go. People with Humvies etc. would disagree with me. And they may very well have a point. Capitalism gets things done, they'll argue. Nice guys finish last. There's truth in every cliche. Question is, of course, is life only some kind of road race, nothing more than a competition of who can survive life the best, and die with the most toys? After all, none of us are getting out of it alive.
As you'd expect, the above is overly simplistic, but in a nutshell, that's pretty much how I think it is. Thanks for your soapbox, Polly. :-)
We agree on much, I think.
As I alluded to with my "corporations never act in your interest" belief, all of the charitable and "good works" that corps do is either for tax or PR purposes. It's not part of the corps charter (except, I guess, in some instances, like Oxfam). No, when corps seem to be acting for your benefit, watch your wallet.
I still hold on to my silly point, though: corps do nothing in and of themselves, they exist only through and by the people who work there. Yes, boards and executives can be fired for not working in the company's best interests, but all of the decisions made are made by people, whom I don't think of as being "evil." The straw man I'm rallying against here is the CEO gleefully rubbing his hands together at the thought of firing half her workforce.
You're right about capitalism and competition and the race to dominate. I find that absurb. Humanity as a whole suffers, is neutral, or is enhanced by finer athletic footwear, no matter which logo is stuck on the side. And, given my druthers, we wouldn't be pawns to the marketing schemes of corps who care nothing of the politics and cultures of the people they want to attract.
Nike's interest in the mid-east crisis is only to make sure that as many people on both sides are wearing their clothing, and that disgusts me.
Your reductionism with respect to ``they exist only through and by the people who work there'' ingores the fact that systems made up of populations behave, macroscopically, in ways that are not predictable from microscopic rules. That is to say that emergent phenomena cannot be explained by reductionistic means. In physics, systems have to have something like 10^23 particles before you get irreducible emergent phenomena, but in systems involving humans numbers greater than 3 are probably all you need. Remember Lord of the Flies?
Yep. Mob mentality may be the way to describe it!
I still contend that corps are run by people and that humans make all their decisions, and that these are people who strip off their corp worwear at the end of the day, hug their kids, and are hopeful that they've done that day is for the best.
None of which should be taken as an endorsement of the phenomena, but I guess I just don't see the individual corps as inherently evil.
And including Avogadro's number in my blog exponentially increases some ranking, I'm sure!
Google is getting nuttier every day - it crawls its blogger.com the instant anyone posts. Searching for "persig" (of all things) on http://images.google.com currently returns my blog as Number 3. (As you can imagine, blogger.com is currently waging a spam war with automated spam "bloggers."
Yeah! And that's another thing about corporations that pisses me off - how they're always buying and swallowing smaller companies, independent companies that I prefer and usually like!
Speaking of Google, I may do something constructive today and award myself five or so new g-mail addresses.
i've been trying to get a gmail address, but it seems that only special people can get them and i'm evidently not one of the elect
Say no more...the invite's been sent!
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