Business-Society Disorder

Two states, two poles that oppose each other. Nei­ther manic, nor depres­sive. Nei­ther pos­i­tive, nor neg­a­tive. Socially accept­able depend­ing upon what part of soci­ety I find myself within.

Rose col­ored glasses for one world, accountant’s shade for the other. Lib­eral social pol­i­tics for one world, self-serving cap­i­tal­ism for the other.

How can one mind co-exist in one body and sur­vive and suc­ceed in both worlds? Must the mind sep­a­rate into two halves that put the other half to sleep when they enter their own world? Yes and no.

Yes, because the rules of the worlds are at odds with each other.

No, because the worlds have dif­fer­ent spans of responsibility.

There are many peo­ple who believe our soci­ety and gov­ern­ment should be run as if it is a busi­ness. There are many peo­ple who believe that gov­ern­ment func­tions should be con­tracted out to business.

There are many peo­ple who believe that busi­ness should be respon­si­ble for all aspects of the wel­fare of its employ­ees. There are many peo­ple who believe that busi­ness should be respon­si­ble for the over­all wel­fare of the com­mu­nity in which it is active.

These peo­ple are wrong.

If the first set were cor­rect, there would be a whole class of peo­ple who soci­ety would have del­e­gated to the trash heap. It would not be long before these peo­ple would rise up and tear down every­thing. And it would be very dif­fi­cult not to say they were jus­ti­fied in doing so.

If the sec­ond set were cor­rect, it would not be long before every­one would be del­e­gated to the trash heap. There would be no busi­ness left to employ any­one. By the way, the own­ers would be on the trash heap along with their employees.

Oh, gov­ern­ment employ­ees would prob­a­bly end up on the trash heap along with every­one else.

The goal of busi­ness is to stay in busi­ness. It is amaz­ing how often this is for­got­ten. Even many sup­posed suc­cess­ful busi­ness lead­ers for­get this. Not because they sud­denly develop a social con­science, but because they become obsessed with short-term results. Or even worse, they become obsessed with per­sonal return at the expense of the health of the busi­ness. A truly healthy busi­ness is one that is able to main­tain itself over a long period of time. It adapts to changes in what­ever mar­ket it is in. Yes, it does develop and main­tain a core of strong and capa­ble employ­ees and it rewards those who per­form well. It looks after these employ­ees because it is in its own self-interest to do so.

A soci­ety has no choice but to form some form of gov­ern­ment. There are many func­tions of a social life that can only be done through orga­nized effort. As much as some peo­ple may desire to under­take these efforts through peo­ple just band­ing together and doing what is right, the mod­ern world’s infra­struc­ture require­ments just can­not be met with­out very sig­nif­i­cant orga­nized efforts. Six bil­lion peo­ple will not be able to co-exist on this world with­out even bet­ter devel­oped infra­struc­ture than we have now. As a min­i­mum, secu­rity, trans­porta­tion, energy, edu­ca­tion and health­care all require major invest­ment in infra­struc­ture and reg­u­la­tory con­trol by society’s gov­ern­ing bodies.

Soci­ety and its gov­ern­ments must also be the pro­tec­tor of those within the soci­ety who just can­not fully func­tion to the demands of the world. No mat­ter how much some peo­ple may wish to ratio­nal­ize the sit­u­a­tion, there are in fact peo­ple who need our sup­port. They are not lazy. They are not try­ing to cheat the sys­tem. Yes there may be some who are. But not every­one who fails is fail­ing because they just did not try. Soci­ety has a real respon­si­bil­ity to these peo­ple. Busi­ness does not have a respon­si­bil­ity to these people.

Thus the two states of me.

Yet I find a dif­fi­cult per­plex­ity aris­ing from this. My role as a leader in busi­ness requires deci­sions that must be made based upon what is right for the busi­ness. Many times this requires sus­pen­sion of spe­cific con­cern for the impact of the deci­sion on the spe­cific indi­vid­ual. These deci­sions are not hard to make when based upon the long-term good of the busi­ness and the employ­ees that will be part of the business.

But I must admit that this nor­mally great country’s some­what eroded social sup­port of our less for­tu­nate gives the other part of me pause with the deci­sions made by the busi­ness part of me. I know that what the busi­ness part of me does is nec­es­sary, cor­rect, and I hope, highly eth­i­cal. But the social part of me is more and more uncom­fort­able with my inabil­ity to influ­ence the work­ings of the soci­ety around me. Fur­ther, I am more and more uncom­fort­able with what I per­ceive as a fur­ther shift to the right on social issues within the soci­ety in which I live.

Some of my dis­com­fort is the exact loca­tion within the US in which I and Still Here Too must live. You have to live where the money is. I have a very good job. I like my job. It is where it is. If I could pick it up and move it to a dif­fer­ent part of the US, I would prob­a­bly want to do it. But whether that would change any­thing is always a gamble.

So what to do?

If I do not do my busi­ness job, it will be done by some­one else. I do the job well. Will it be done as well by the new per­son? I do not know.

Will the inter­nal strain on my social con­scienc be at all less­ened if I just stop liv­ing my busi­ness life? I do not know, but sus­pect not, at least not com­pletely. After all, I have done this for many years and have much in my past to keep my con­science feel­ing guilty if I so choose.

Can I really change the social and gov­ern­ment world? Being hon­est, no, at least, no not directly. I would never suc­ceed in today’s polit­i­cal world. Way too out­spo­ken for such things.

But I can speak my mind. I can do what I think is right. That, and a small glass of whisky will keep me going.

Is Still Here