Down the Rabbit Hole

In 2008 John Stossel produced a video piece on Greed. In my estimation it was no documentary, too much was left out germane to the theme of corporate greed. While covering some very salient points, he left the viewer confused about what actually was corporate greed, and never really got to the heart of the definition.

I tend to like John's coverage of our nation's liberty issues, but this one left me exceptionally dismayed. It is indicative of what journalism has come to. It wouldn't take much to fit portions of his work into the evening news. And does anyone with an ounce of intelligence pay attention to the news? Journalists today are a gaggle of talking heads, all competing to entertain the public with what they consider news worthy. And I am certainly less interested in their opinions on whatever they dig up. But that's what the world planners want sheople to know, which is a chief factor in what is behind civilization's retrograde descent.

Back when business in the USA was optimistic I worked for a venture that rose Phoenix-like from the chapter 11 demise of another company I had worked for. The people who formed this new company founded it upon a different paradigm: share the wealth. Not entirely equal in monetary reward structure, it did provide profit sharing, and medical coverage was 100% of company cost. No employee premiums. Their view of time off and sick leave were similar to medical coverage expense. Everyone's intellectual input was respected and valued. At the weekly status meetings the vice president presented an updated status of the company, asked for our reports, and then asked each person in the various departments what was needed of him to facilitate achievement of the next week's objectives. As for the CEO, his attitude was he was the least technically qualified, and remained the figurehead who represented the company's business image where needed. I felt like I was running my own company within this venture. Because of this business paradigm, I grew more personally and professionally than I have before or since. We became a cohesive, interactive group where all had an equal interest in the success of the venture. It was a very heady experience. The venture failed primarily because of inadequate market diversity, underfunding, and investor fraud.

Compare the business philosophy of TJ Rodgers, founder and CEO of Cypress semiconductors, with Joe Leuken, founder of Leuken's Village Food chain. When John asked Rodgers about his millions in profits being greed, he defended himself saying that he started the company by himself, in debt, and that he had worked for it and deserved it. Deserving of profits? Rightly so. But he is also a hard man to work for. Completely willing to fire a good worker who was seeking a $2,000 increase, rather than consult with the individual (or so John insinuates in his video). And in my estimation when a CEO works 15 hours a day while his hired help works the regular eight, he does not understand his function, which is in part to delegate duties to those with specific skills. He is not empowering his staff.

Joe on the other hand, acknowledging his success as a food merchant due to the contribution of his 400 employees recently announced turning the chain over to employee ownership, rather than selling out to his competitors and leaving his faithful hired help to the wolves of corporate take-overs. I have to agree with Stossel's thesis, greed is the operative for Rodgers, who seems to think his wealth was built in a vacuum. His employees are getting what they deserve: a paycheck for assisting him in his personal venture for his own aggrandizement. Never mind what the personal ambitions of his employees might be, or what the effects of termination might mean to them. He is not providing a service to them (greater wealth), they are provided with the opportunity to serve him.

Is this the philosophy of capitalism? Rodger's form of capitalism is how to foster disloyalty. Leuken's not only generates loyalty, everyone thrives. I understood capitalism to be a system of wealth to be used to create greater wealth. The wealth is not in the financial return.  The financials are incidental. Wealth is the combined business acumen of the people who form the cooperative. When corporations value their people rather than the stockholder returns, the company thrives and profits and stockholders both increase. It is in the team of the cooperative where the real potential for monetary wealth lies. Napolean Hill expounded on these principles of the Mastermind in his book Think and Grow Rich.

Since the late 80s, corporate officers have been running business in this country like fast-food chains. Get in, grab all you can, and move on (a la Gerber's Emyth). In the mid 80s the CEO of TRW received $2M in bonus money (a paltry sum compared to compensations today) while simultaneously laying off 200 employees. Rather than being the skilled CEO who could turn an extra $2M by expert management of his human resources, he got a pat on the back for keeping the investor folios looking good, at the expense of liquidating TRW's greatest assets. At the least, everyone of those terminated employees could have been thanked well by a severance package that included an additional $10K of the CEO's bonus for his failure to preserve and expand the business.

You can take it as an axiom; when a business must lay off its hired help, it is directly due to the managers failing at their duties. In Japan, during that period when a CEO could be found pushing a broom and participating in the company wide fitness events, nobody was laid off in tough times. Everybody pulled together, tightening their collective belts if necessary, to keep the business going until product restructuring or development was implemented. Doing otherwise was considered dishonorable.

Honor is part of what is missing in US business today. Everybody has shifted their focus to what is happening on Wall street, just like a century ago. Too many people have been seduced by the "American Dream" happening overnight. Just last week the Powerball lottery exceeded ¾billion, which Frederic Bastiat said "is the poetic vision of the poor." I haven't met an honest, honorable, unpretentious CEO in twenty years. We have learned nothing in a century, although we have developed the science of wealth acquisition to a level unknown in the annals of world history. George Soros, Ted Turner, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and all their fellow corporate barons aren't practicing capitalism. They're practicing avarice. Instead of giving away a paltry 1% to charity, they could easily and very comfortably live off 1% of their financial sack. The balance could be reinvested in other ventures that put people back to work, the kind that empowers the poor in third world nations rather than enslaving them to international debt, the kind that puts the US back into the world leadership position of know-how, opportunity, and success. With such an approach, watch the need for charities gradually disappear. As has been pointed out many times, poverty and population automatically become self-limiting when the standard of living rises.

When a person has met the challenges of wealth creation the only challenge left is power. When avarice meets power the cliff of civilization's demise is a deceptive precipice on the horizon. Henry Kissinger admitted openly how intoxicating power is; how utterly irresistible once experienced it becomes. Repeatedly through the millenia, world planners, conquerors, dictators and their sycophants who, having acquired vast wealth at the expense of the populace, have sown the seeds of civilization's collapse. Students of world history will observe this with the demise of each and every one. Yet this cadre of self-exalting elitists return, empire after empire, civilization after civilization, determined to achieve that Nirvana and Utopia of a mythical Golden Age, convinced that this time it will be achieved. In this episode at least, the objective is to stamp at all religions but Pantheism. In so doing any philosophical or moral restraint to cause them a twinge of conscience is erased. A young Rabbi having declared the moral Golden Rule (not the Wizard of Id's version), went on to explain how much easier it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, which Kingdom he said is within the soul. The love of money, not it's making, IS the root of all evil, and leads to total corruption just as surely as total power corrupts totally.

No John Stossel, a little greed is not required in the pursuit of comfort, or financial security, or wealth. Little does not enter into the process. Greed is required, commensurate with the scale of covetousness. And those who engage in such ambition lose touch with the value of life, with their own humanity. Witness the testimony of Warren Buffet disowning his grand-daughter, or Jamie Johnson of Johnson & Johnson, or Foster Gamble of Proctor & Gamble. Real wealth has always been in man's humanity to his neighbor.

SethSmee