You see this bandied about a lot without anyone ever really trying to explain it. “All politicians are just serving big business’ interests. They don’t care about the people!”
How, I ask, does it come to be that voting for business makes it so that you obviously don’t care about the people? Certainly if companies were asking the government to be allowed to kill people to sell as meat or something I could see that the interests of one was at odds with the other. And even in that same case, what business is ever going to do that? Who are they selling that meat to?
That I know of, there have been exactly four things in history where business was acting poorly in regards to it’s employees and the populace at large.
The 40 hour work week
A happy worker is a hard worker (a relatively new idea and figuring into modern day vacation packages, health and dental packages, and whatnot that companies offer to get people)
Racism/sexism (which was more an issue of the people than the company)
Minimum wage
Now, certainly, certain industries might not have been at the top of planning ahead, and the heads of certain companies are certainly slimeballs. But even still generally these come back to the individuals involved or the populace itself not caring very much either.
But in the end, most of everything a company might ever want, it wants because it needs that to serve its customers and continue paying its employees.
Now of course I’m not saying that there aren’t issues where companies aren’t being negligent. I’m just saying that I find it very hard to believe that even a majority of these aren’t done for the overall benefit of the people of the nation. And certainly not such a majority that such a sweeping statement as “they’re just supporting businesses” can be made and be anything but really short sighted, meaningless, and stupid. Most of it seems to stem from, “Well I was fired from X and they just hate people and want to see the end of the world!” Well, maybe the reason X fired you is because you were a slacker who always just sat around talking about how evil the company was when probably a lot of their issues came from slackers who would rather sit around badmouthing everything rather than trying to make the company a better place.
Etc. etc.
What say you? Any support for the idea that anything like a majority of pro-business legislation would be obviously negative to the majority of the populace. Not a list of isolated cases, but an actual “Yes, it’s us versus them suckah!”
There is legislation introduced regularly by a nearby local congressman, written by large fishing interests, which would ban small fishers from fishing, payout money to big fishers who want to “stop fishing”, and let the remaining big fishing interests keep all of the local grouper catch (which is close to 90% of all grouper available in the USA). This would probably only help big commercial fishing interests and would probably not actually decrease the price of grouper OR protect the grouper population. So while no actual citizens would be rounded up and shot, the guys who give big money to the politicians would make out and everyone else would be screwed. I think this is what people mean when they say that “a majority of pro-business legislation would be obviously negative to the majority of the populace.”
Nor would they allow workers to organize in labor unions to demand those things when government won’t force business to provide them. Before the labor legislation of the New Deal, companies typically fired anybody who talked union and hired goons to keep out organizers; and sometimes they went a lot further than even the law of the time theoretically allowed, but they rarely had a problem persuading government to look the other way.
I think if you look at history you could make a stronger argument for short term benefits to business at the cost of long-term harm to the populace. You could make the argument that whats good for business is good for the general populace. But, you really need to take a look at the specifics to get a good idea of what kind of legislation is being passed for the benefit of businesses to debunk this. Alot of the big-business legislation that is passed is pure market manipulation in favor of the big guys. This winds up improving the lot of the major players in that industy while long-term eliminating agile small businesses, who are generally the ones that drive innovation.
I’m not quite sure how to demonstrate this without giving you concrete examples though, so I’ll reference some of the recent potential ‘regulating’ of some telecommunications, namely VOIP and IPTV/National Franchising.
VOIP providers are being forced to provide E911 services. A Good Thing, you might say, and I would agree, if not for a few caveats. VOIP is a fledgling business, just getting its feet on the ground. Requiring this kind of investment so early in its lifetime places a cripling burden on this business. Look at how long the cell phone providers were given to implement their 911 services. Its no coincidence that they got more leway (they are owned by the larger telecom services). So one is left to ask - why the double standard?
Example 2, there’s a telecom law currently being considered that will give the baby bells the right to a national franchise agreement (the same one if you read the link) when it comes to rolling out their IPTV services. They will get to bypass all the local community agreements that the cable companies were forced to make in their initial roll-out. Also, the cable companies will be prevented from being able to partake in this national franchise agreement for a significant amount of time and will not be permitted to undercut those with the national franchises. So on the one hand you’re saying ‘yay increased competition’ but at what cost? Why do they need a competative advantage over the cable operators? The cable opperators aren’t getting any special consideration now that they’re entering the phone market, why do the telcos get it when entering the TV market? The Telcos can certainly afford to negotiate local agreements, they just don’t want to. And in pushing for this bill they’re stripping localities of their abilities to negotiate these agreements and rights of way. Again, why the double-standard?
So, yes, short-sighted, business sponsored legislation is generally a bad thing for the population at large. They sponsor legislation that slants the market in their favor - which harms consumers in the long run by creating barriers to entry for start-ups and innovators.
Someone once talked about enlightened self interest as the cornerstone of capitalism. Humans are capable of enlightened self interest, corporations much less so.
First of all, remember that pro-business policies and pro-market policies are two different things. A truly Libertarian government would neither regulate corporations nor subsidize them – whatever the social or economic effects.
Second, when politicians do favors for established business interests – interests that are in a position to reward them with campaign contributions – that is not necessarily bad for the people, but it at least justifies raising the question that such actions might have been motivated by considerations other than the politician’s honest assessment of the public good. IMO, in fact, it raises a presumption of guilt on the part of official and donor alike; in each such case they should be presumed guilty until proven innocent, and the legislation, no-bid contract, or whatever should be presumed socially harmful until proven beneficial.
Union-busting (see above).
Environmental pollution.
Any other kind of externality a corporation would rather have society or government pay for than take out of its own bottom line.
Outsourcing jobs to countries with cheaper labor and fewer labor and environmental-protection laws.
Selling people things they might want to have but which, in broader perspective, might not be good for society as a whole, such as our post-WWII built environment of sprawling suburbs and absolute automobile dependency.
Small businesses very rarely drive innovation (and those that do are generally purchased and expanded by the larger corporations.) And still we’re talking about little-business versus big-business not People vs. Business.
I do see that businesses will ask for short-sighted stuff, but that seems to me as something that the general population is just as complicit in. Very little stuff seems to come down as us versus them.
Why do you think the big guys buy up the little guys? Because they’re the one’s coming to the market with the innovations And in my post, I thought I tied it all together. Its not big vs little or big vs people. Its all connected. By slighting the small guys, you’re long-term harming the people. None of it exists in a vacuum.
Now you’re at a point where the distinction breaks down entirely. It’s also beside the point of the OP – nobody accuses the government of bending over backwards to serve the needs of small business.
The junkie is glad to see his dealer. That doesn’t mean the dealer is not harming/exploiting the junkie.
Selling baby food with arsenic in it.
Using slave labor.
Using female employees as sex toys.
Massive pollution.
Massive environnmental damage, like clearcutting and strip mining.
Working employees so hard they are crippled.
Killing people who try to unionize.
Ignoring industrial safety, until a massive disaster occurs and many die.
Forming a monopoly and massively raising prices.
Tearing up the streets to put in cables and such, and not bothering to fix the damage.
Forcing people to work without rest breaks until their bladder bursts.
Forcing female employees who get pregnant to work under conditions so harsh they miscarry.
Acquiring a patent, and stifling innovation by forbidding anyone to use it.
Given the choice, corporations have always behaved like utter sociopaths.
That’s quite a list Der Trihs, but could I please have cites for the following items? [ul]
[li] Selling baby food with arsenic in it.[/li][li] Using slave labor.[/li][li] Using female employees as sex toys.[/li][li] Forming a monopoly and massively raising prices.[/li][li] Forcing people to work without rest breaks until their bladder bursts.[/li][li] Forcing female employees who get pregnant to work under conditions so harsh they miscarry. [/ul][/li]
While such abuses aren’t unheard of in the 3rd world, I’m unaware of any Western corporation acting so inhumanely, at least not in the last 50 years.
Because we have laws against these things, it’s hard to say what the laws are preventing and what the prevalent moral codes are preventing. Still, I think if any of these things occur anywhere, it shows that “business” is in the business of making themselves money, not in serving humanity.
[li] Selling baby food with arsenic in it.[/li]
Gerber, 1997; carrots as I recall
[li] Using slave labor.[/li]
THis reference may be to slave labor used during WWII; it may also be to forced labor of prison inmates at present (the 13th Amendment does not ban slavery; it bans slavery except as punishment for a crime)
More later, kids are whacking each other with swords.
Allow? You mean fight tooth and nail. You mean beating picketers and workers who sympathise.The history of unionization is replete with violence acted upon organizers.
Almost all the gains are due to union efforts have been granted to white collar workers. Vacations, overtime pay, health care and retirement. As the power of unions fade the benefits are dissappearing. Pensions and health care promised are going away.
I think the position of every American worker is getting weaker and industry will prevail.
Note big industry has difficulty innovating. When IBM wanted to make a PC it made a new divvision to outsource to Bill Gates. It knew inside the time period was too great.
The inventor of Virtual Reality tried to get American capitalists to invest in it. It was specutively a five year period with large development cost and no payback likely til then, He had to take it to Japan because our system rewards executives on yearly financial performance. Long term investments are hard to get funded.
To many of us, a question of little business vs. big business is the same thing as people vs. business. There’s a fundamental difference between big and little businesses. The principles ideas driving capitalism only work when the economy is based on small businesses.
See there? The butcher, the brewer, the baker. Do you see the CEO anywhere on that list? When I was young, there was a bakery shop called Bluegrass Bakery about five blocks away. They sold over twenty varieties of bread and forty types of cakes and cookies. Everything was baked fresh every day, and when I bought bread it was still warm from the oven. And everything was delicious.
Needless to say, it’s been bulldozed and replaced by a Dunkin Donuts. Now If I go there my only option is a stale donut.
There is a fundamental difference between a large and small business. When a baker actually owns his shop, he can make all the decisions, and he can decide to take pride in his work, to go the extra mile in making quality products, to make the effort to be friendly with his customers. When a manager only controls one branch of a nationwide chain, those options disappear. Decisions are made from the top. For the CEO, pride, care, and dedication aren’t even factors. The CEO has no motivation to produce quality products, since executives never actually deal with actual customers. Producing mediocre products by assembly line and generating sales through a deluge of advertising is much easier.
The ways that big businesses scuttle small ones through legislation are too numerous to count, but the general idea doesn’t change much. In the enclave around Vanderbilt here in Nashville, the streets used to be lined with locally owned restraunts. They were driven out through rising rents, taxes, and fees, and now we have mostly nationwide chains. In Chicago, I hear that there’s legislation introduced to ban cooking oils with trans fats, and it’s specifically designed so that fast food places can easily comply but Mom-and-Pop places can’t.
How many of these items are still relevant to the people who make this statement today?
What percentage of business-related legislature is negative to the populace?
And still, one would have to argue that 90% of things like the environment or any (supposed) disappearance of little companies are equally an issue of complaisance on the part of the populace, so that presenting it as an Us vs Them issue is rather shortsided for half the population to be making.
It doesn’t matter who is in cahoots (god I love that word) with whom, if the businesses are the ones who benefit then it’s an attempt to “protect business.” It sure as hell isn’t an attempt to protect me.
Well, it was off the top of my head, as I said, so I don’t have cites on hand. As well, I was including the Third World; given the transnational nature of big business, you can’t leave the Third World of of discussions of the ethics of “American” businesses. They’re there, after all. As well, the OP said business, not American business in the last 50 years.
Selling baby food with arsenic in it. : Learned it in high school history.
Using slave labor. : Prison labor comes to mind, as do various sweatshop operations.
Using female employees as sex toys. : Why do you think sexual harassment laws were invented ? “The office isn’t finished until the secretary is screwed onto the desk.”
Forming a monopoly and massively raising prices. : Why do you think anti monopoly laws were made ? Look at OPEC; it’s the same principle.
Forcing people to work without rest breaks until their bladder bursts; forcing female employees who get pregnant to work under conditions so harsh they miscarry. : Both news stories; the second was about the mistreatment of workers in the Third World by American companies IIRC.
And in my post, I thought I tied it all together. Its not big vs little or big vs people. Its all connected. By slighting the small guys, you’re long-term harming the people. None of it exists in a vacuum.