Pursuit of profit has replaced morality

The law in the United States of America makes very clear that the responsibility of corporations is to conduct all business operations solely for the benefit of its stockholders. Given that harsh reality, can one rationally expect that the management of any corporation will hold itself accountable to any interest other than stockholders? The purpose of a business corporation is profit and nothing else. The fiduciary responsibility of corporate management logically subsumes any responsibility to interests other than stockholders. The only limits on management in such an environment are those that are imposed by statute. Absent such statutory limitations, management is not just free to pursue profit. Profit is its sole objective. Moral convictions hold little weight in a court of law.

No man, nor any management team, can serve two masters! It appears axiomatic, therefore, that expecting a private corporation to serve the social or economic needs of all citizens in preference to stockholders is a Hobson's Choice, in which there can be but one result. Can we logically expect any man or organization to pursue diametrically opposite goals and expect that either goal will be achieved? The answer to that is obvious, or ought to be, yet we ignore this truth on a daily basis. When an individual exhibits such behavior he is diagnosed as mentally ill. When our society exhibits such behavior we call it politics. It is just such detachment from reality that kills, maims and bankrupts millions of decent people who become the innocent victims of such madness. Worse, our laws protect such madness.

The purpose of government is to meet the needs of our society that cannot and or should not be conducted for the purpose of profit. When the sole purpose of any human activity is profit, we reduce ourselves to objects or things. Doing so reduces the individual to that of a machine, an automaton. God may have created man, but it takes a man to transform himself into a thing. It is in such a mental, emotional, social, economic and political environment that human life has only a price tag, but no value. The choices we make in such matters speak directly to our genuine value systems. The choices we make betray the individual and collective character of ourselves, our society and our nation.

When the political system of a democracy becomes a commodity in the capitalistic market place, the transition to an authoritarian technocratic fascist state becomes a tragic sequelae. Alexis deToqueville made this very clear when he said, "After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the entire community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd." Corporate-controlled government is your worst nightmare.

During the entire eight years of the Bush Administration, we saw a concerted effort to privatize government functions. Think about the meaning of such actions. That which is privatized is no longer in the public domain. Once privatized, such functions become proprietary, and are no longer subject to the scrutiny of the public. Your government is being sold off piece by piece. That which is private no longer belongs to you, the citizen. Our government becomes their government. What private individuals own, they are free to do with as they please. A citizen under a privatized government becomes chattel, the property of others.

It's axiomatic that economic power tries to translate itself into political power. Similarly, political power tries to transform itself into economic power.

Fascism is simply Capitalism gone berserk. Using the mechanisms of laissez faire unregulated free market capitalism as a weapon to attack the rights of American citizens and our democracy is despicable. Liberty or freedom is not license to do any damned thing some private corporation or individual decides will make a profit. The noted economist John Maynard Keynes observed that "Capitalism is the preposterous idea that the meanest of men, with the nastiest of motives, will work for the common good." Could it be that the greatest weakness of democracy is its seeming inability to deal effectively with any serious problem until it reaches crisis proportions? When disaster hits and people are killed or injured, then we hear the phrase "It's a wake up call." The alarms may have been ringing for years, but until people die in sufficient numbers, nobody seems to give a damn.

William O. Douglas said, "Nightfall does not come all at once; there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged. It is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air; lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." Former President Dwight Eisenhower warned us of the same in his "Farewell Address to the Nation."

In 1944, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace said, "The really dangerous American Fascist ... is the man who wants to do in the United States, in an American way, what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American Fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a Fascist, the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public, but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power ... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

The alarms have been sounding since Eisenhower retired. The Klaxons have been blaring for the past 28 years since President Reagan stated in his Inaugural Address that Government is not the solution to our problems; it is the problem. Where previously there had been just smoke, under President George W. Bush, wildfire broke out and transformed itself into a firestorm. That firestorm now feeds on the fiscal, monetary, environmental, energy, educational, medical and other needs of the American citizenry.

The history of man is written in the blood of ordinary citizens, too often in the script of those with privilege and sociopathic constructs. Perhaps it will always be so. But must it be that way? This writer thinks not, but we who have a vision of a better world must develop some very necessary passionate Intensity and act on it.

jimrowe1@frontier@com