The pursuit of profit, above all / by kevin murray

We live in a capitalistic society, of which, businesses are created in order to sell product so that the manufacturer or the distributor of such, can make a profit.  In the scheme of things, most people and most consumers do not ever begrudge a company that plays fairly by the rules of making a fair profit. On the other hand, most people and most consumers do have an issue with companies that price gouge their consumers or that cheat consumers by selling products that purport to be one thing but are really not, or purport to be of a certain quality and are not, and further that cheat the employees out of fair wages in the creation of those products so being sold.

 

Again and again, to the degree that executives are taught, that the pursuit of profit, is the only thing that matters, no matter what; then the slippery slope so created for a significant amount of companies is inevitably going to be the exploitation of labor, the doctoring of products to some degree, and deliberate deceit of the consumer base so buying.  No doubt, there are laws upon laws, to deal with these very things, but when the corporations have the money to buy the best legal minds available, as well as to lobby and to unfairly influence legislators to see things the corporate way, then those laws will not ever be robust in their actual application, and thereby will be successfully subverted in such a way, so that all appears well, though in actuality, all is not.

 

While individuals can cheat other individuals in many ways, the degree that corporations can cheat individuals is at a much higher and invasive level, because when a given person is personally liable for what they do, say, and act, they are in the natural, going to be more circumspect.  As for those groups of individuals that merge into a corporate entity, in which by virtue of that corporate entity those individuals are thereby protected from ever being in danger of personal liability, this thus allows corporations to behave in a manner that is far more aggressive in that pursuit of profit, because those corporate individuals know that they are not ever going to personally suffer for their bad actions, but rather it will be the corporate entity, if it even comes to that which will have to face the music, instead.

 

All of the above essentially means that more laws will not ever correct those corporations that behave in a manner that is unethical, but rather that the mindset of those corporations has to be corrected, instead.  Which therefore means that while corporations are entitled to make what profit that they can fairly make; that they also have an incumbent societal responsibility to do so in a manner in which labor is paid a fair wage, and in which the work conditions within the corporate sphere are safe, along with adhering to the practice that corporations should be good corporate citizens in all that they enact, say and do.

 

Those that believe that corporations are entitled to make as much money as possible are basically saying that the pursuit of money trumps any and all social responsibility and duty that corporations have to their country of origin, and that people should therefore take the backseat to that corporate pursuit of money.