|
Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Lee Iacocca, Jack Welsh, etc. We judge them not on their social responsibility and environmental stewardship but on whether their businesses are financially successful. This has been the compelling story in America- how rugged individualists conquer nature and beat their competitors in the so-called "free market." You can witness this almost every week on TV's "Apprentice" where many of the competitors rely on deceit and other unethical behaviors to win the prize.
A less compelling story, but the one many of us liberals/progressives/etc like to tell, is the story of how labor unions and progressive thinkers pushed for employee rights and economic fairness in opposition to what big business wanted. Our story talks about the many excesses of big business and the work progressives have done to curb those excesses. We often criticize the actions of business and our opponents call us "socialists" and say we are waging class warfare.
Our main problem is that our story is less compelling because it goes against what people have been socialized to believe- namely, that capitalism within the U.S. system is the best and fairest economic system in the world. The profit motive, which I view as very egoistic, extends to the consumer as well because the consumer often attempts to maximize the utility of his/her dollars when making purchasing decisions. Many consumers couldn't care less if the shoes they buy were made by 12 year old Guatemalan orphans working in a sweatshop. In fact, many consumers will never know about those things because they don't have easy access to that information.
I see our nation as being very short-sighted and that short-sightedness works in the favor of Republicans. We are interested in the short-term more than the long-term. We save very little, we have difficulty controlling consumer impulses, we aren't concerned about long-term debt, we aren't concerned about the dwindling of resources, we live for today. Aren't Bush's policies and actions very much that way too?
|