A Philosophical Justification for Business

[Kleine Scheiße]

Power that is not derived from the consent of the governed is bad, correct? It is bad to have a "political class," that much we agree on -- but what makes the power gained through the accumulation of wealth somehow more admirable or noble than through the accumulation of academic or political acumen? The government is not a business, but all businesses are effectively governments of their consumer and employment bases. It is natural that the government should seek to preserve the status quo to advance its interests -- the "business class" has done this as well, taking great effort to shape the public narrative in such a way to reward and encourage favor for their own accomplishments. The reason this is a bad thing is because their motivation is arrogance. They by-and-large see themselves as better than and removed from the rest of society. They look down on the government for "getting in their way," blinded to the implicit entitlement therein. They obsessively fight government-led innovation, because they claim that is an oxymoron, all the while using the fruits of the United States military's (read: a part of the government) expansive research and technological development capabilities. The creation of the internet was accomplished through the military. Businesspeople simply marketed it.

They build schools for themselves and restrict attendance to their own kind. They build entire cities and communities for themselves along these lines. They accomplish this by convincing you that you have a say in it. You do not have a direct say in the composition of the Forbes 500 list. They accomplish this by convincing you that you are at fault for them not valuing your contribution to their empire and laying you off. You are not at fault for the exponentially-increasing greed (but they call it "standard of living," which somehow makes it okay) of the upper middle class. This excludes being fired for cause, of course.

There is a pervasive refusal to admit that money is an easy means into power over vast elements of society, and there is no such consent of the governed in business. Even when voted into their power, business leaders are not truly democratically placed in their positions, nor do they often make it that far by merit -- they often succeed because people invest opportunities in one another, and they are good at getting people to invest in them. Business is effectively rule-by-likeability with less direct accountability. There is a reason corruption in government is considered newsworthy; it is surprisingly uncommon. Businesspeople look out for each other in a way that state employees (outside of teachers and law enforcement) do not. Not even legislators are quite so lockstep.

In the eyes of the government as an abstract, you do not have a specific role assigned to you as an individual. In the eyes of the individuals running the government, you might, but this is why personnel is tantamount to policy. The business framework inherently reduces you as an individual to a consumer role, regardless of the personal beliefs of the people running the business. This is where businesses exert undue, nonconsensual power upon "lower" class social groups, even regardless of an individual businessperson's personal decency. The format, by nature, implies an unequal exchange either way.

If the premise is accepted that individuals are automatically "roled" by businesses, by nature of the format, is there a philosophical justification for the corporate-driven business system? Small businesses are not guilty; they provide services to areas that often would not have them otherwise, and the "individual as role" phenomena is not as common.

Enforcing -- albeit passively -- a given role or purpose (such as "consumer") upon an individual is an act of violence. We have found that it is exceptionally difficult to run a society without business, and the abolition of the market framework is not viable. Businesses need to exist to drive the economy (which in turn drives the government). So, we accept the existence of business and traditional "economics" as a practical necessity, and we attempt to soften this blow to human agency with regulation and taxes.

This is why taxation is not theft, as an aside. "Theft" is undertaken with malice and a "no refunds" policy attached. You receive benefits from paying taxes. Taxes are a state-directed market transaction, and not paying them is theft of services.

Ethical consumption under a capitalist framework is possible, because unless you are at the boardroom table, you are little more than an innocent bystander. Is there such a thing, then, as ethical capitalist production?

[Georg Ebner]

Power and wealth are only acceptable, when inherited.
Otherwise they are absorbed by the trash of small go-getters. (Those with really big ambitions fail always.)

[sparkey]

When you begin with absurd assumptions and redefinition of terms, you reach absurd conclusions, like questioning whether any large business production is ethical. Here's a suggestion: Start at a microcosm. As you only briefly touch on, small businesses exist, and not every business in a capitalist system is a multinational conglomerate with a superwealthy board of directors. We can perhaps reach a common starting ground if we can at least agree that small, voluntary transactions are generally ethical on both sides. You need to be clearer when, exactly, a business begins to be unethical if you want to make an argument that makes sense.

You'll also need to justify these gems:

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What does this even mean? That an ice cream store has police and legal power over people who buy their ice cream? What in the world is an "effective government" to you?

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I thought their motivation was profit? And even if the motivation of businesses affecting the public narrative is "arrogance," how does motivation affect the ethics of actions? The best economic systems have clearly been those that have harnessed human motivation, not those that have attempted to suppress it.

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This is historically untrue unless you're using a very unusual definition of "simply marketed."

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Is this another way of saying that wealthy communities exist? What is the definition of "restrict" that you're using? Who provides the services in these cities? Why would I have an input in whether or not wealthy people fund the construction of communities?

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Citation needed. Layoffs typically are noted as being not due to performance, but rather a change in needs for the company. How would it be more ethical to prevent layoffs, leading to market instability and bankruptcy, affecting many more people than simple rounds of layoffs? You're also falling into the trap of faulting motivation exclusively again. What do you imagine will be the effect of stripping away human motivation? We've run that experiment as a species before if you'd like references.

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Are you arguing that high-up businesspeople are not monitored for performance? They're often among companies' largest investments, and you can bet that they are held to account. I suspect that you're just defining a term strangely again to reach this odd conclusion, perhaps "direct accountability."

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This is the most unparsable part of your argument. Not everyone is a consumer to a business, there are other roles, and contrasting that with the government is weird, where there are similar concepts of impersonal roles (like citizen, prisoner, adult, etc.). Then you just assert that freely agreed to, consensual transactions where both parties believe they are benefiting is "undue," "nonconsensual," an act of "power," and "unequal." None of these make any sense regardless of the "role" businesses view some people in, and imply a redefinition of terms on your part.

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The obvious answer is that "roling" isn't unethical. Why would it be...?

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Oh, lol, OK, you think it is because you have a completely absurd definition of "violence" that you haven't provided to us.