In our hyper-capitalistic system frequently, wealth is generated and power is wielded in a manner that is adversarial to everyone except the owners to whom profit is paramount. In the operation of any business there are numerous stakeholders besides the owners such as workers, consumers, clients, the community, and the environment. In our capitalist economy, however, the agenda of the owners is elevated far above the others.
The myopic focus on profits frequently results in working conditions that are unsafe, unhealthy, overly stressful, exploitative, and emotionally abusive. This profit seeking agenda can produce products that are toxic, unsafe, and designed to break down. It can deploy marketing campaigns that are deceptive and manipulative. The singular focus on profits can burden communities with externalities such as air and water pollution, and noise. It can strip communities of their natural resources and leave nothing but environmental devastation in its wake.
For decades the profit seeking agenda of large corporations has caused them to deny, resist, and delay taking necessary steps to avoid catastrophic climate change, already causing irreversible damage. These are but a few of the problems resulting from our system which treats the profit-making capability of owners as sacred.
Theoretically, market forces are supposed to motivate private enterprise to act in ways that are beneficial. Competition for workers is supposed to ensure that wages are equitable, and competition for consumers or clients is supposed to ensure that goods and services will be of high quality. A business’s desire to be seen as reputable and responsible is supposed to discourage them from doing things like polluting and damaging the environment.
In reality, instead of market forces resulting in ever better practices, what often occurs is a “race to the bottom.” Rather than putting them at a competitive disadvantage, companies which adopt aggressive practices such as squeezing workers, taking unfair advantage of consumers, using manipulative advertising, and damaging the environment, will often set a new low bar which their competition will either have to adopt or be forced out.
Anti-competitive practices such as price fixing, monopolization of an industry by one or few owners, and suppression of innovations by either buying or destroying new competitors are also widespread problems in a capitalistic economy.
The only way to keep businesses from engaging in behavior that is rapacious and adversarial to the general public is through the oversight of a government with sufficient authority and resources to ensure that misbehavior is kept at a minimum. Without a government strong enough to act as a countervailing force, no other effective mechanism exits to limit the damaging effects of profit seeking enterprises.
And even strong governments are likely to succumb to regulatory capture where in return for remuneration, officials fail to regulate, or create laws legalizing harmful business practices. But the solution to regulatory capture cannot be and need not be to give up on government.
Governments and businesses are institutions capable of beneficial contributions to society and ultimately to all of humankind, but they are also both highly susceptible to engaging in damaging self-interested, behavior. So why should we think that one of these institutions can act as a check on the other? Because there are critical differences between the two.
Private enterprise exists for the purpose of creating maximum profit. Although various businesses will attempt to present themselves as being chiefly concerned with providing the goods or services they sell, everyone knows that the vast majority of businesses must be primarily concerned with profitability. In our competitive economy any unprofitable enterprise will fail. Regardless of any harm caused to non-owning stakeholders, any business’s action that maximizes profit is consistent with its primary goal.
In contrast, in a healthy democracy the true mission of the government can be to serve and protect its citizens, despite that governments often fail this mission. But this is where another significant difference between private enterprise and government is key. When it comes to private enterprise, even the most publicly traded companies are completely opaque compared to the degree that a democratically elected government can be examined and held accountable.
Elections, access to records through freedom of information laws, congressional power to investigate, the ability of the press to enter governmental buildings and demand answers, the right to protest – none of these guarantee an honest and effective government, but when it comes to private enterprise there is nothing that approaches this degree of transparency. And government is also adjustable. Voters can demand even more transparency and accountability and unsatisfactory officeholders can be voted out.
Working towards a strong, effective, and uncorrupt progressive government requires continuous effort but it is the only practical option for offsetting the excesses and vulnerabilities built into our system.
A strong well-funded government is also essential to accomplish the naturalistic humanist social agenda — ensuring that sufficient resources are invested in helping everyone develop to their fullest. Rather than having vast resources concentrated to benefit a relative few, as they are now, the adaption of such a program will develop our most neglected resource – the multitudes who never receive the support essential for the most complete expression of their human potential. Doing this is not only moral, it is an investment that will return an inexhaustible source of creativity and innovation, drawing from a gene pool that is both rich in diversity and immense.
A government implementing such a humanistic agenda will require a strong and tenacious demand by a vast majority of voters.
For such a majority to emerge we will have to overcome blaming one another.