What
obligations do capitalists have to their society? Any? Or is it only
the money?
Consider
somebody who works for a living. Family. Wife and children. Hard
worker. Maybe overtime. He has time and resources to look after his
own affairs. But does he have time to look at the bigger picture?
And even if he had the time, would he have the opportunity. Would he
have the education?
Probably
not. Indeed, in most cases, a person cannot look after larger
interests than his own. Yet, each person is as dependent on this
bigger picture as he is of his job. Indeed, one of the people he is
most dependent on is his boss. His boss can make his job miserable or
pleasant. He can fire him, in some places without any cause at all.
Just so, his boss is dependent on his own boss, and his boss on his
boss. And so on, up to the very wealthy and very powerful. And even
the self employed, even the small business owner is dependent on
those richer and more powerful than he is in society. After all,
they are able to spend vast sums of money, and alter the government
and the allocation of resources. Any one of these powerful could
destroy him, the worker, the self employed, the small business man,
purely incidentally, without thought, or regard. One has only to
look at the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of down towns destroyed by
Walmart, or the thousands of desolate factories, to know this is
true.
We
are all dependent on what goes on beyond our horizons. And we look
to other people, those above us, those around us, to keep track of
what those things are. We have to.
This
dependency is a socially necessary thing. Society could not exist
without it. A worker who was more concerned with the affairs across
the planet simply could not give enough attention to be able to
manage his own life. The same for the small business man. He must
attend to his business, his community, the people he buys from and
sells to. He doesn’t really have the time to spend a lot of it
worrying about the larger issues.
And
of course there are other dependencies. We are dependent on the
behavior of our neighbors, on the politicians who are expected to
serve us, on the people who provide the public services in our
community. Society is a web of dependencies. So the question is:
Do these dependencies carry any obligation beyond the purely
economic? Do they carry a moral obligation?
And
what do we mean by moral obligation? From “The Free
Dictionary:”http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/moral+obligation
we have: MORAL OBLIGATION. A duty which one owes, and which he
ought to perform, but which he is not legally bound to fulfill.
Now
some of these dependencies are equal exchanges. I depend on my
neighbors, and my neighbors depend on me. The sense of ‘duty which
one owes,’ seems clear in these cases. It is not so clear in cases
of hierarchy. Does a boss owe his employee anything besides his
salary? Is not the entire value for both parties of the relationship
summed up in the exchange of labor for money? Is not the employee
compensated in his wages for all the factors of his employment
including, say, the fact that he can be fired at will? If we believe
this, then be believe that not only is the labor market efficient,
but that it is just. But if we believe a particular market is just,
how can we believe that the same market, tilted by external forces,
is also just? Is the market produced by a monopoly just? And
employment, we have a market defined not only by an asymmetry of
needs, as are all markets, but by an asymmetry of information. Can
the employee negotiate a premium on not only on what he doesn’t
know, but what he doesn’t know he doesn’t know? Not only can he
not negotiate such a premium, but it is unreasonable to expect him
to. And even were he to, he would be in competition with those who
would not demand such a premium.
The
point here there is that there is a gap, which cannot be remedied by
formal debt and application of law.
And
what about the relationship between the wealthy and the rest of us.
Let us first admit the obvious. They pretty much control the
economy. That is, our welfare, the welfare of the society is
dependent on their actions. Even if this were not completely the
case, it is very much so. By their actions, should they choose, they
can do enormous damage to society.
I am
not claiming conspiracy. I merely claim a similar response to
similar motivations. There was no conspiracy to outsourcing, nor is
there to robotization, but damage was done, though some would say the
benefits to society more than compensated for it.
But
who got compensated? Did the workers who lost their jobs to
outsourcing gain any share of the increased profits enjoyed by those
companies who sent their jobs overseas? Were they owed any? Did the
companies who fired these workers for greater profit elsewhere have
any obligation to these workers, or society in general? Or just to
enjoy their increased profits, to divide among the wealthy
shareholders?
So
do the wealthy owe the rest of us anything? It need not be a matter
of owing. A parent has
obligation to his offspring. But it is not a matter of debt.
And in a very real sense we
count on the wealthy to take care of us, to manage the economy for
the benefit of us all. Why
should society allow them to have and retain wealth, if it were not
to the benefit of the rest of society? If
the wealthy have no obligation, then they have no obligation to
act to society’s benefit. They have no obligation
not to inflict damage on the rest of society. So if inflicting
damage on society profits
them, then we should expect them to do so.
Unless
they indeed have a moral obligation to the society which supports
them.
