Government Versus Business - Left versus Right: Both sides ignore the REAL issue.

The Right claims that Business is the Good Guy, and that Government is the Bad Guy.

The Left claims that Government is the Good Guy (except in foreign policy, for some reason), and that Business is the Bad Guy.

The Right would like to see Business free to do whatever it damned well pleases, unencumbered by regulations, in a pure laissez-faire capitalistic system.

The Left would like to see Business taken over by Government in a pure socialist system.

Both are blind to the real problem and grasp at ideology instead reason. That is why both systems have repeatedly failed and will continue to fail.

The real problem is not whether Government of Business is supreme. The real problem is power, and the abuse thereof. It matters not a whit to the oppressed who their oppressor is. In a pure socialist system, the government is the oppressor. In a pure laissez-faire capitalistic capitalist system, business is the oppressor. In BOTH cases, whoever is in power pushes around everybody else, especially the little guy.

In the United States, most of the anti-business legislation was brought about directly by reaction to abuses. Examples: Business used to simply fire injured workers. This brought about worker's comp legislation. If Business had provided for decent treatment of workers injured on the job, worker's comp, with all its bureaucratic falderal, would never have come into existence. Business used to pay workers absolutely as little as possible. This brought about the minimum wage legislation. More recently, Business has been involved in wholesale plundering of the economy: Banks earned billions, perhaps trillions, by selling risky mortgages on the secondary market, which had previously become used to the "due diligence" being performed by the originating banks and therefore had its guard down. This caused a major depression in the economy. Such abuse is now bringing about restrictive legislation on banking and the guilty bankers are screaming "government interference".

Each new governmental intervention introduces new rules, regulations, and bureaucratic stupidity. These then encumber the legitimate efforts of ethical businesses to prosper. Often they do not even solve the problems that they were intended to solve either. In any case, the more regulation, the less freedom. In some cases, the freedom to conduct business profitably and ethically is interfered with even more than the freedom to cheat and steal.

What is needed is a new attitude on the part of Business. The monolithic idea that profit is the sole legitimate goal of business must yield to another, more rational agenda. Not only has this idea resulted in massive cheating of the public, but it has also resulted in massive peculations from businesses.

When the directive from "on high" is that profit is the only thing that counts, that ethics are meaningless, that it is quite permissible to bilk the customers, oppress the employees, cheat the vendors, and ignore the public interest in order to maximize profits, it generally does not take long for all levels of employees to realize that it is pointless for them to serve their employers faithfully. This results in pilferage, peculation, embezzlement, and generalized worker apathy. In other words, the principle of "profit over all else" does not even maximize profit, but produces disloyalty and worse.

Only by embracing a genuine and humane ethical foundation, can business prosper in the long run and be subjected to minimal regulation. The goals of business must be expanded to include: excellent service to customers, decent treatment of employees, honorable handling of vendors, and honest concern with the public interest. Clearly, these all conflict with one another, generating difficult decision-making at every turn. That is as it should be. If there is no conflict of goals, it is easy to decide: just maximize profits. When these other considerations must be taken into account, the need for trade-offs emerges.

The total abandonment of ethics by Business is responsible for the reaction in the form of constrictive regulation. If business wants to be free of intrusive governmental regulation, Business must regulate itself ethically.

Corporate charters need to be re-written to put such changes down in black and white.

David F Mayer

PS: I certainly do NOT claim originality in all of the above. Only the formulation is original, the ideas are taken from many places, including:
http://www.jointwinwin.com/blog/shel-horowitz-mad-marketer