by Cameron Foster

Created on: February 21, 2010

Capitalism is the best system yet discovered to encourage and reward achievements, be they on a personal or corporate level. Evidence includes the utter failure of the Soviet economic system, and the gradual conversion of China to a capitalistic society, although it is still communist politically.

However, a great weakness to capitalism is this: it relies on the morality of the participants to make it work.  When money alone becomes the only objective, then anything goes. This is the rampant disease which affects corporate America in the 21st Century. No longer do (most) large employers feel any blessing or duty from providing jobs to the community and creating a usable product or service. Naturally, a business must be profitable but when it is always at the expense of the employees, in favor of the stockholder, then I submit the system has faltered.

Now, with allegiance to the almighty dollar alone, corporations claim to serve only the stockholders often at the expense of the citizenry as a whole. When a company moves overseas to enjoy lower labor costs that put 1,000 Americans out of work, this may indeed be a cold reality of the global economy, but too often the easy way out is the path chosen by many businesses.

This same mentality allows CEO’s and other high-ranking officers of corporations to be totally insulated from any real accountability. It’s like a private sector version of Congress, which votes itself pay raises and life-long benefits guarantees, while the average American wonders if they can save enough for a modest retirement. Oh, the hypocrisy!

Again, this goes to a morality failure, which is one of the crucial checks within the capitalistic system. The other is the prevailing belief that the marketplace rules. That is, if a product or service proves inferior, people will eventually stop using it and that effort will fail. The problem with this idea is what works fine in a closely knit community may not work so well in a transient environment.

It is simply impossible for a consumer to keep track of all companies ethical versus not. Internet postings are not always a reliable way to judge this: the Web-post may just as easily be a vendetta or a kook as a legitimate claim.

Organizations like the BBB help, but the numbers tell a story of far too many people duped every year. This is another evidence of dilution of moral accountability. While there have always been crooks, they usually were on the move and often not part of respectable society. Now they are the ones in the glass penthouse offices, asking for your money.

So, my answer is “No way!”. Why should these individuals, who may merit a bonus when the corporation profits (how they go about making this profit may be underhanded, but I’m focusing on the question here), be considered for one when it is not?

 It is insane and unethical to suggest any of these people would even be given one when their mismanagement laws instrumental in the problem in the first place.

Let’s hold them accountable without mercy.

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