Business as Virtue?

The world is filled with people who evaluate any activity as a possible business opportunity. Can it be done at a profit?  If so, how much can be made? Can I invest in it?

We see them on TV, hear them on radio, and are subject to their advertising at every turn. They comprise the majority of our government and corporate management, with our president as a perfect example.

The Amish have a very different view. They view excessive profit as a sin. When dealing with an Amish business, the owner often asks me "Is that too much?" after they hand over the bill, which is invariably modest. Has your hospital or university ever posed that question? Should they?

Our culture's acceptance of a desire to extract wealth from each other is in fact a disease, one born of a society that's increasingly crowded, anonymous, and individually focused. Business is by no means a disease in and of itself, but the view of business purely as a means of extracting wealth from our neighbors is. Not long ago, engaging in business was a means to contribute to the well being of our neighbors, with the generation of wealth as a secondary benefit.

Before the age of industrialization or even before agrarian society, people lived in small groups, typically under 150 people. Look at any indigenous society, and you'll find one where people performed a wide variety of tasks necessary to the group's survival.  Such tribes function essentially as extended family, where everyone wishes to remain part of the tribe (exile from the tribe typically amounted to a death sentence), and thus hopes to do their best in support of their tribe. There was no anonymity to hide behind. Anyone who made it their goal to extract inordinate wealth from their peers simply didn't get to stick around too long. Among the indians of the Pacific Northwest with their potlatch culture, the goal was to give away as much wealth as possible.

Even as societies become agrarian and grow into small villages, this same dynamic remains. Small businesses served only their immediate communities as a matter of practicality, and thus knew their customers personally. I suspect that most felt a sense of duty and connection within their community and acted accordingly. Anyone believed to be gouging their customers or producing an inferior product would soon find their lives made difficult by the other members of the community that they themselves depended upon.

As cities have grown to sizes such as those made possible by today's fossil energy use, the cloak of anonymity has gone from a rarity to the norm, where business owners likely serve customers on the other side of the globe whom they will never meet, and whom they care very little about. Today's businesses have grown to the point where personal integrity and virtue no longer drive their decision making. Most are driven primarily by the desire to extract the maximum amount of wealth from their clientele as possible. (This is in fact a legal requirement for publicly held corporations!) The greater their haul, the more we're encouraged to endorse their feast through investment.

Driving this dynamic even further is the idea that the only way to become truly wealthy, or just to retire, is to invest in such corporations and thus encourage their behavior. Gambling, usury, speculation, and the like were once taboos for good reason, as we're now discovering. Most were at one time illegal as well, because they destroy societies. They're currently destroying our life support systems, which is undoubtedly even worse than merely destroying our societal fabric.

As I see it, the morality, character, and ethical factors driving business decisions are in fact inversely related to the size of the business. Monopolies that now dominate the globe are by enlarge the greatest evils we've ever encountered. They may be the hand that feeds us, but they're by no means our only option.