How We Will Make the Change
It won’t be easy, but this is the way
Posted Sep 13, 05:46 pm in
While I happen to agree with many of the socially progressive sentiments expressed by the American left, it’s time for the discourse to become more nuanced. Many on the left argue with no apparent compunction that businesses and businesspeople are problematic in themselves. These people, unfortunately, have bought into the sort of shallow extremist thinking that they are ostensibly accusing conservatives of.
Businesses are in fact neutral forces, and can do great things and can do awful things. A lot of it depends on what the public as a whole expects of them, and allows them to do. So say what you will about business, but also understand that every person who ever buys from any business is also playing a part in affecting social problems and influencing what happens in the business world. To blame all these social problems on businesses and corporate greed addresses only half of the problem. Consumers as a whole have not lived up to their end of the bargain in being more aware of how their own consumption habits enable or disable businesses to behave the way they do. And to dismiss business as a whole as being inherently evil precludes the idea that business can– and most likely will– be the strongest engine of change in this world one way or another.
But ultimately, the choice is really up to the people to choose what direction our society goes in, and what their role will be in promoting that. As it stands now, businesses are often punished by the market (AKA the people) for ‘doing the right thing.’ As a people, we must decide whether we want to correct that. So don’t blame business for being heartless; they do it because the markets demand it. And that’s all of our faults; we should not just hold businesses accountable, but also our governments, politicians, relatives, neighbors, friends, and more than anyone– ourselves.
It’s completely ridiculous to think that once we tear down our “big, bad business institutions,” we’re going to arrive at some kind of global consciousness. Equally ridiculous is the idea that business is an inherently evil pursuit and will fade away once we have achieved a certain stage of spiritual growth as a people. The fact of the matter is, for our society to make a leap of consciousness, we will need to actively choose it and reprogram our economic incentives system to better enable it to permeate our society. The impetus for that change has to come from within our society, not from some politician, bureaucrat, or businessperson.
At best it’s naive and counterproductive to go around blaming corporations and business for social injustices and the shortcomings of our society; at worst, it’s a harmful, divisive, and inflammatory attitude that dismisses the contributions that business can bring to the table.
Some might respond that my arguments here rely on “rational-choice” economics, in which consumers purchase based on perfect knowledge and conscious thought. Perhaps it is unrealistic— at this stage— to expect otherwise. But it seems quite clear to me that individuals should be responsible for their own actions, and aware of the repercussions of their actions. Far from irrelevant, moving beyond this self-imposed ignorance will be necessary to make the changes championed by the idealistic left. In fact, getting people to raise their own level of awareness is the one change that the world will truly need to move beyond where we are. We will need people– lots of people– to become aware of their impacts on the planet, and we need those people to take action. Finger-pointing and simplistic arguments against business aren’t the solutions. Personal change and sacrifice are.