Bring It On!

When Greed Ain’t Good

Unrestrained corporatists are an interesting breed. To them, government is inherently evil. CEOs see the government as a bunch of anti-corporate lunatics that would take away their God-given right to turn a buck. They resist even the smallest threat of limp-wristed regulation on the grounds that the “free” market is the only way to run the nation’s economic show.

No doubt there’s value in a free market approach, but the world has never seen a truly free market. It’s only seen markets that are more or less “free” relative to other more or less “free” markets. And the markets aren’t truly free because corporatists want them that way.

It’s much easier to con a Congressman into voting for some corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks or incentives to do something they should be doing anyway - for example, to stop spewing contaminants into the air and water - than it is to truly compete. If that wasn’t true, K St. would be lined with trendy condos instead of lobbyist offices.

Corporatists argue that deregulation creates beneficial competition, so they resist efforts to regulate as though they were being thrown to the lions. Deregulation is far from some holy grail. Airlines used to be regulated. It was a wonderful era, one in which people actually boarded airplanes with the unreasonably high expectation of getting where they wanted to go. Today you’re lucky to end your flight in the correct hemisphere, much less the Guantanamo-like conditions of the major airport of your choosing. Today, there are fewer airlines, they are considerably less safe, they treat customers like turds on their neighbor’s lawn, and I defy anyone to say how much a ticket costs since rates are made up on the spot by computers randomly selecting prime numbers filtered through Madame Desiree’s crystal ball.

Yep, that whole deregulation thing was a panacea for the consumer and investors, wasn’t it?

What Do You Call a Risk Without the Risk
Speaking of investors, corporatists are fond of saying less corporate tax and interference are the only keys to spurring investment. They argue investors are taking on scads of risk in a quest to make more money - a situation they believe is universally beneficial across, and at every level of, the economy. But the funny thing is, it’s hard to talk about investors intrepidly taking on risk if they demand a bailout when their ill-advised, deregulated Econ 101 investment strategery goes south. Can you say Bear Stearns or the name of your local electric company?

Corporatists also defend astronomical CEO compensation. They hand lots of money to CEOs to turn in untenable short-term profits and then give them even more when the business goes belly up because of those short-sighted decisions. I suppose that’s what they call a win/win situation - at least for the CEO. I’ve yet to see a CEO who followed his own orders to his staff - “we run a meritocracy here and if you don’t put in 110%, you’re outa here.” Please note that when companies go bust, laid-off 110 percenter employees rarely get a seat at the creditors’ table and they sure aren’t represented (at company expense) by a large staff of very clever and very vicious lawyers. How this benefits investors who just took a bath is beyond me.

Making money is, at the end of the day, a good thing. However, there’s always that greed thing. What happens when companies show “irrational exuberance” like loaning money to those who clearly can’t afford to pay it back? It’s not in their interest, the investor’s interests, nor the employees’ and customers’ interests. How much greed is good and where do we need to get tough before some knot-head MBA from Harvard runs everything into the ground?

The Size 10 Boot Rule
I think we’d be well off to draw the line like this: If the industry is willing to adequately regulate themselves, great. If not, they’ll need some “incentive” to change their destructive ways. I call this the Size 10 boot rule, CEOs and investors use their common sense or the government uses their well-upholstered asses as a size-10 boot horn.

Secondly, risk means you have to actually risk something. That means if you put money into a stupid enterprise that implodes, you lose. Buy stock in a utility and fuel prices go up? Tough shit, you should have thought of that before you invested. Get over it. Don’t caterwaul over how cruel and unfair your world is. You risked your money, a bankruptcy called your bluff, and you’re eating Ramen for a few months until you can build a new stake by day-trading or some equally insane way to get rich quick.

I think the world would be a much better place for all of us if we actually lived in a real free market, but we don’t and there’s no reason to pretend we do. All that does is muck up the works and turn us into disingenuous board members on the dole.

So corporatists, I advise you to buy stock in Sleep Number beds to rest in between financial fiascoes. It may not be dignified, but at least you’ll be comfy when you bitch and moan about making money.