At a time when reckless
irresponsibility by executives at many
high-profile coporations in the United States has made
corporation-bashing more popular than ever, it is easy to dismiss the entire notion of
incorporation and
limited liability as merely vehicles for
personal gain, as
Wicker808 has shown. But arguments presented in this node that
all corporations are inherrently evil and socially irresponsible because one of their primary goals is to accumulate money are
specious and
unfounded.
First off, I agree with Wicker (and I hope that everyone reading this does as well) that it is possible to accumulate vast amounts of wealth within the rules of the American economic system, sometimes with great ease. But I am not sure that doing so violates the "goals of capitalism" (though I don't believe such goals exist), even if we use hir definitions of these "rules". If person A realized capital gains of $1 billion in a year, a huge percentage of that amount (IAMNAA), at least 20%, is going to be taken in taxes by the Federal Government alone. The same holds for the year after that. The "people who, for whatever reason, are unable to provide for their own lifestyle" will be enriched to an enormous degree by person A's wealth when the government spends his tax money on them.
But on a less technical level, is it really the case that all people who accumulate vastly more wealth than others are inherently, provably greedy and acting only out of self-interest? To put it in Wicker's words,
"Perhaps they see it as a game to win, perhaps they like the challenge, but their underlying motivation is irrelevent because what they are comitting is greed."
Is this statement true? I contend that it is absolutely false, and present the following counterexample.
Bill Gates is currently the wealthiest man in the world. At the high-water mark of the tech boom of the late 90's, his worth was estimated to be as much as $80 billion dollars. While that figure is not nearly as much now as it was then, he still has net worth of at least $40 billion. Does he enjoy a good lifestyle? Absolutely, as anyone who has seen his enormous mansion will attest. But does he take away from society by concentrating so much wealth in one person? The charitable foundation which he established, currently named the "
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation", which was founded to research and cure infectious diseases, especially those of third world nations, has an endowment of more than
$28 billion, nearly all contributed by him. He has repeatedly stated that he will leave to each of his children a trust fund of $10 million each, a miniscule amount when compared to his worth, and donate the rest of his enormous fortune to his foundation. Think about it: By conservative estimates that involve him living to old age, he will donate at least
$60 billion to a foundation whose goal is to save the lives of people who live in places where there still might not be running water or electricity, let alone a health care system that provides for them. How exactly does trying to save these peoples' lives harm society?
While I could go into great detail in refuting Wicker's second point about coporations embodying "pure greed, because that is the only goal they can have", I will bring up only one counterexample in the interest of brevity. Bertlesmann, one of the three largest media companies in the world, has written into its charter that its goal is first to provide for the community, and that the goal of making profits is only to provide funds to do so. I am not saying the executives at Bertelsmann are not well-paid, but their corporation clearly has admirable altruistic goals. And the charter statement is not mere rhetoric; Bertlesmann contributes millions of dollars of aid to not-for-profit organizations every year.
These two examples clearly illustrate that greed is not always as one-dimmensionaly self-interested a motivation as Wicker claims.