1. Power corrupts.
2. Them that has gets more.
3. Capitalism has been raised to the level of religion.
4. People believe what they want to believe.
5. Most people who claim to be engaged in ethical reasoning are actually engaged in ethical rationalization. Justifying rather than objectively scrutinizing their own actions.
6. The more you consume, the more you need to comsume.
7. When you get really rich and successful, you start to believe you deserve it.
8. And you come up with impressive belief systems (ideologies) to justify your great wealth and success.
9. And you have the influence, money and political savvy to get enough non-rich people to believe as you do, or at least to go along with it.
10. Your worldview gets out of whack unless you get whacked regularly. It’s time for a good wacking. One that will reverberate for at least several decades.
Up there at the highest reaches of wealth in our country, some really twisted ideology has taken hold. I doubt self-reflection or reasoned discussion has any chance of dislodging it. Some heads need to roll for it to ever change. The only thing that will overcome this kind of greed is fear. They have to know that people feel so strongly about their sick ideology and behavior that their insular world is threatened unless they change.
The toxic ideology is “laissez-faire capitalism”. Which is French for “Leave us capitalists completely alone to run things as we see fit”. This desire has turned into a powerful ideology that is elevated above the level of religion and philosohy. In other words, the desire to be completely exempt from government or popular interference has become a self-justifying belief system that matters to its proponents more than what ethics, conscience or sense of justice might otherwise dictate. And ethics, conscience or sense of justice are realm of religion and philosophy. The laissez-faire proponents are also ignoring a great deal of history.
Look, history has taught us two things about economic systems. One is that a pure socialist system works badly. The other is that a pure capitalist system works badly. Most Americans seem to get–or have been inclucated to believe–that pure socialism fails. But a lot of people conveniently forget what history shows about pure capitalism. Pure capitalism leads to abusive monopolies, like those that were exposed and then outlawed in the first two decades of the 1900s. Unbridled capitalism leads to excessive speculation, like that which caused the Great Stock Market Crash and Great Depression. And that which is now causing the Great Recession. In other words, completely unregulated capitalism always leads to abuse and eventually economic disaster.
The moral of the story is that while too much government oversight or regulation stifles economic growth, having zero government regulation is equally disasterous. So the question is not whether government regulation is good or bad. The question is how much government regulation is desirable.
So the next time someone tells you that government has no business telling business what to do and that all regulation is bad, tell them they’re full of crap. Or at least that they are being stupidly simplistic. Yeah, the business of America is business. But without the right amount of government oversight the business of America screws America.
So let’s stop talking about whether regulation is good or evil. Because clearly its a necessary evil. What we need to talk about is what is the most practical type and amount of regulation that will let business thrive without letting business run amok.
But I don’t think discourse will get us there. I think that there have to be enough Wall Street types suffering enough drastic consequences that several decades hence they and their successors will remember. And they will think: “Wow, remember what happened after the Great Recession of 2008 started. We really got whacked. We better not do that again.”
Fear is the only thing powerful enough to limit their greed.
April 6, 2009 at 8:19 pm |
The problem is that until capitalists are forced to consider a time horizon beyond the short term (aka The Long View), gamesmanship will still rule. Most of the current bankers are not being held accountable — they are “too big to fail” and thus are being bailed out at our expense. Just how is it that you suggest that we inculcate the appropriate behaviors when we are busy bailing them out because we have decided to reward the very same people who created the fiasco in the first place? Just wondering….
April 15, 2009 at 5:41 pm |
Great piece. However, I do not agree with the conclusion. Is fear the opposite of greed? Can fear overcome greed? What about morality, ethics, integrity and personal responsibility as ways to overcome the “ME” generation. Perhaps fear is the trigger point to a realization that the current system needs to be fixed.
Consumption leads to more consumption – soooooooo true.
April 21, 2011 at 9:46 pm |
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