- Darwinism of the Unethical
Capitalism by its very nature facilitates that the most unethical people in society take the positions of the most power. It is by the process of what some call social darwinism (although I think the term itself is somewhat of a misnomer): The people who are most effective at making money rise to the top (CEO, for example). The problem is that those people are the very people who have the least conscience. Why? Conscience, practically speaking, is not an ability or power to attain a goal–it’s what tells you not to do something you would otherwise do to gain something (for example, money). The fewer blocks to achieving such selfish ends you have, the more effective you will be at that goal. In fact, because of competition, executives (and voting shareholders alike) need every edge they can get to be on top, which means someone with a conscience would likely be filtered out of that level of power.
I’m not saying there is no aspect of a win/win situation in a company offering a product/service for money, I am only saying that those with the most power are must usually be those with the least conscience. That’s why companies do things like rape the environment, sell us things that are harmful to us that we crave (like nicotine, sugar and fat), undermine workers’ unions (sometimes by killing people), use manipulative advertizing tactics and strong-armed tactics, sell things that break in one year, etc. The law makes as many accomodations for this evil as possible (and politically acceptable) by micromanaging - passing laws for every little thing a company can do - but that can only go so far. You can’t absolutely legislate morality. It is only by an entourage of these checks that the inherent evil of the most successful corporations is kept in (some level of) check.
If you wanted to make as much capital as quickly as possible and that was your sole concern and you didn’t have to worry about law, would you do it via a win/win situation? No, you would mug, or better, con someone. The law can only acts as a buffer between those in economical power and us so that they can’t so directly or acutely slight us as individuals, as nations, and as a planet. (It is true that the law is not strictly a buffer in that it is the matrix by which capitalism and even anarcho-capitalism are even possible, but the metaphor suits the above purpose.)
It doesn’t help that we have the mentality of excusing corporations for having only one bottom line, the dollar, by viewing them as economical machines. They are, ultimately, made up of people, directed by human decisions, and powered by human actions. But as single agents, the most successful companies’ behaviors can best be characterized as ‘sociopathic.’
- The Call to Consmerism
One of the major avenues corporations have to making money is to foster a consumerist mentality. This isn’t so hard, as our lives are already made unfulfilling by a fundamental disconnection between humans and enslavement to the industrial machine. This fostering is the result of the various means by which corporations push products on us – copious advertizing, machinations in advertizing, the construction of malls and stores, etc.
Perhaps the worst outcome of consumerism is not its direct psychological effects or the tax on our time, but its effects on environment. It would be impossible for the whole world to live with the same luxuries as the United States, and it is impossible for the current levels of consumption to sustain themselves forever with their tolls on the environment, which include the extinction of 2,400 species daily (1,000 to 1,0000 greater than it would ‘naturally’ be), the deforestation of way over 150,000 km² a year, and millions of metric tons of pollution per year.
The fact that part of getting as much money from your pocket as possible is making products that don’t last nearly as long as they could greatly exacerbates the problem of environmental pillage and pollution.
- The Reinforcement of Selfism
Capitalism is demonically effective at producing materially productive win/win situations amongst groups of selfish people. It’s analogous to very strong Nash equilibrium. The source of selfism is a subject of its own, but the fact is that capitalism reinforces it by placing people into a context greater than they are where altruism is completely unnecessary for making a living and all cooperation is mere contract. Furthermore, success itself is defined by the dollar. There is little room for, let alone demand for, growth in the dimension of real cooperation, and aligning oneself to the values of one’s culture (or the perceived values, per the economical model, which thusly become the actual values) automatically becomes aligning oneself to selfism.
- Lobbying
It’s not that the economical rulers don’t already have more than enough power, but they unethically extend their power to legislation by hiring people to fake honest opinions on how things should be run for the good of society in order to mislead good-willed politicians toward their favor. Lobbying is a dispicable act and should by all means be made illegal. It is a mild form of treason. It’s hard enough for congressmen to do the Right Thing without being inundated per opinion whoring.
- Abuse of the Mind
Advertizing agencies do everything in their power to manipulate your mind using rules of psychology to get you to buy their product. Much of it you’re not even aware of; we are largely unconscious of our own mental processes, and so it’s naive to think we act as autonomously intelligent agents who are aware that a commercial is just a commercial and can thus make a well-balanced decision based on it. They wouldn’t use manipulative tactics if they didn’t work. You’re protected from the most devious of these tactics by law, but that doesn’t mean that what’s left is ethical or even acceptable. You wouldn’t tolerate psychological manipulation or button pushing from a sociopath, and you shouldn’t accept it from your friendly corporation. (Granted it’s not all that bad. Much of advertizing is innocuous enough, although all of it is a waste of effort and attention. Generally, if you really wanted/needed something, you could find out about it yourself if the information is put into an appropriate directory for reference.)
- Media Control
Media is 99% privately owned. 99% privately controlled. People with enough money to own, for example, a television network, or a newspaper, want one thing: more money. People with lots of money favor certain politicians (republicans for example), and the content of their media may reflect it. Are people generally dumb enough to vote for politicians based on what they hear on television? Yes.
- Exploitation
Just because employment is a consensual contract doesn’t mean that companies don’t exploit and abuse their workers. The fact is that you (virtually) need/to work for a company, and finding a job isn’t even that easy. It’s a buyers’ (corporations’) market, and they are the rule makers. So within legal limits, they can do anything they want with you. (The need for legal limits is evidence that corporations have the power to exploit their workers.) Not everybody can be an entrepreneur, and not everybody can live off the grid, or if they can, if they did there would be no capitalism. The corporations have almost all of the control.
- Imbalance of Wealth
A. The richer you are, the easier it is to get richer.
B. Not everyone can be rich; there just aren’t enough man-hours.
The divide between the rich and the poor is therefore always widening.
Also, being filthy rich implies a waste of human effort, because the rich spend their money on extravagances. If the time and effort that could otherwise be put into 20 houses is put into one really big house, is the fulfillment gained by the owner of that house really 20 times greater than a normal homeowner’s? It seems to me there is a principle of diminishing returns here. I know it seems ideal that if you have the money you deserve to be able to buy extravagances, but if you add up all the benefit produced by human effort in a society and divide by all the effort put into it, you get a smaller number when you have more very rich people; thus having lots of riches is a waste.
- Homelessness
The fact is that some people helplessly slip through the cracks of the system. You can get laid off, and if you’re unemployed for just a few months you may end up on the street. Bums seem to be in another world from us. We think that could never happen to us. They’re Not Like Us. But homelessness is always right around the corner, and yet we feel justified in looking down at the homeless and not helping them out resulting in their continuing to be homeless. Why do we feel that way? Because of capitalism is believed to be ideal and so if they don’t have a job, they obviously ‘don’t want to work’.
