Business won't be ethical until it shares society's values again
“Have we got the picture now? In banking it seems it's entirely fine to twist an entire system to secure a commercial advantage, turn a blind eye to moving large amounts of dubious money without question, and, in your spare time, construct products that are so inherently unstable that they can bring down whole banks and economies. Damn the rest of us.
Oh yes, and, as if Barclays' and HSBC's antics are not enough, we find a large company like G4S can fail to fulfil a major commitment at a time of intense national pride and yet still collect their management fee from the taxpayer. Are we being mugs here? How much more can we take? Or have we become inured and accepting of corporate arrogance? Asks David Jackman, writing in Independent on Sunday (22.7.12)
I fully agree with Jackman’s remarks when he says:
“The solution lies in a number of steps that explicitly focus on building a corporate maturity and bridging a connection between corporate aims and broader social objectives.” Or “In the same way, the deferring to the mantra "the market will decide" is a similar cop-out. The market of itself is capable of deciding nothing.”
And now please see what I had written years ago, well before the emergence of the financial meltdown of September 2008:*Living happily is “the desire of us all, but our minds is blinded to a clear vision of just what it is that makes life happy”. The root of happiness is ethical behaviour, and thus the ancient idea of moral education and cultivation, is essential to ideal of joyfulness.
*Economics, from the time of Plato right through to Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, was as deeply concerned with issues of social justice, ethics and morality as it was with economic analysis. Most economics students today learn that Adam Smith was the ‘father of modern economics’ but not that he was also a moral philosopher. In 1759, sixteen years before his famous Wealth of Nations, he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which explored the self-interested nature of man and his ability nevertheless to make moral decisions based on factors other than selfishness. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith laid the early groundwork for economic analysis, but he embedded it in a broader discussion of social justice and the role of government. Students today know only of his analogy of the ‘invisible hand’ and refer to him as defending free markets. They ignore his insight that the pursuit of wealth should not take precedence over social and moral obligations, and his belief that a ‘divine Being’ gives us ‘the greatest quantity of happiness’. They are taught that the free market as a ‘way of life’ appealed to Adam Smith but not that he distrusted the morality of the market as a morality for society at large. He neither envisioned nor prescribed a capitalist society, but rather a ‘capitalist economy within society, a society held together by communities of non-capitalist and non-market morality’. As it has been noted, morality for Smith included neighbourly love, an obligation to practice justice, a norm of financial support for the government ‘in proportion to [one’s] revenue’, and a tendency in human nature to derive pleasure from the good fortune and happiness of other people.
*Economic rationality’ in the shape of neo-liberal globalisation is socially and politically suicidal. Justice and democracy are sacrificed on the altar of a mythical market as forces outside society rather than creations of it. However, free markets do not exist in a vacuum. They require a set of impartiality in government, honesty, justice, and public spiritedness in business. The best safeguard against fraud, theft, and injustice in markets are the cardinal virtues of justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence, and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
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David Jackman: Business won't be ethical until it shares society's values again
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