Avarice as a Deadly Sin — Brief Reflections on Corporate Corruption’s Grip on Us

© 2011 Peter Free

 

09 May 2011

 

 

Morally accepted avarice — traveling a little too far from the wisdom of holy books

 

Looking back seven decades, I notice that corporate corruption today strangles America and the world in a way that would have been culturally unacceptable in the 1940s and 1950s.

 

Avarice is now enshrined as one of the morally legitimate foundations of American (and world) government and culture.  Greed, and its inherent manipulation of people, appears no longer to be an ethical or legal evil.

 

We talk about punishing corporate thieves, but in reality what we do is help them conceal their gains at our expense.  Then we put these moral criminals in charge of our institutions.

 

How dumb is that?

 

 

Professor/economist Jeffrey Sachs often writes about corporate excesses

 

Dr. Sachs’ observations match mine:

 

The world is drowning in corporate fraud, and the problems are probably greatest in rich countries -- those with supposedly "good governance."

 

There is, however, scant accountability.

 

Two years after the biggest financial crisis in history, which was fueled by unscrupulous behavior by the biggest banks on Wall Street, not a single financial leader has faced jail.

 

The fines are always a tiny fraction of the ill-gotten gains, implying to Wall Street that corrupt practices have a solid rate of return. Even today, the banking lobby runs roughshod over regulators and politicians.

 

Corporate corruption is out of control for two main reasons. First, big companies are now multinational, while governments remain national. Big companies are so financially powerful that governments are afraid to take them on.

 

Second, companies are the major funders of political campaigns in places like the US, while politicians themselves are often part owners, or at least the silent beneficiaries of corporate profits.

 

Roughly one-half of US Congressmen are millionaires, and many have close ties to companies even before they arrive in Congress.

 

As a result, politicians often look the other way when corporate behavior crosses the line. Even if governments try to enforce the law, companies have armies of lawyers to run circles around them.

 

The result is a culture of impunity, based on the well-proven expectation that corporate crime pays.

 

© Jeffrey Sachs, The Global Economy’s Corporate Crime Wave, Project Syndicate (30 April 2011) (paragraphs split)

 

 

What to do?

 

Sachs thinks that (a) publicly financing elections and (b) exposing these corporate evils will help to solve them.

 

Those are first steps.  But I’m doubtful that exposure is enough.  And I don’t see our plutocrat-dominated Supreme Court permitting an across-the-board barrier against money’s “free speech” in elections.

 

Ask yourself, how many Americans don’t know that these corporations and their looters have skated on money’s so glistening ice?

 

And how many of us continue to vote the same plutocrat-supporting politicians right back into office?

 

 

It’s a cultural thing — we’re in love with greed

 

When we individual Americans are not yet rich, we assume that we, or our children, will eventually put the “pluto” in “crat.”

 

So we turn a blind moral eye to the hold that avarice has on the developed world.

 

Forgetting that something deeper is at stake.