Speaking of movie scripts, Aaron Haspel has a nice disection of how Hollywood protrays the business world.
The anti-business movies deal overwhelmingly with schlock purveyors: yellow journalists (Citizen Kane), swampland peddlers (Glengarry Glen Ross), penny stock hustlers (Boiler Room), shady aluminum siding salesmen (Tin Men), and out-and-out gangsters (The Godfather). It's a Wonderful Life gestures half-heartedly toward the notion of quality as good business, as in the scene where Mr. Potter's rental agent lectures him on how all the nice houses in Bailey Park are killing his real estate business. But mostly it's more people vs. profits hoo-rah.In a "pro-business" movie like Executive Suite, our hero, William Holden, is the research chief for the furniture company, and in his big speech, as he ascends to the chairmanship, he tells the board that the company will never sacrifice quality, profits be damned. That it might actually be more profitable to manufacture good furniture does not cross the screenwriter's mind.
Incidentally, if I ever hear an executive of a company I own stock in say "profits be damned", I'm going to immediately sell.
Most people don't understand capitalism, and think profits are evil. The root of the misunderstanding is that many people want companies to be "nice", but companies don't exist to benefit humanity any more than you as an individual do. Companies consist solely of the assets of people who have invested (shareholders), and those people expect their money to be used for their own benefit, just like you expect your money to be used for your benefit. As Neal Stephenson hammers home in his excellent
Cryptonomicon, people who invest in corporations are interested in one thing: increasing shareholder value. Every corporate executive should realize that increasing shareholder value is the only moral use of company assets.
Individuals should be charitable and generous with their own money, but no one has any business giving away money that belongs to other people.
Update:
Plus, the very existence of profit (absent monopolies and other market distortions (which are never entirely absent)) demonstrates that a company is providing a beneficial service to its customers as well as it's shareholders. As I explained here, trading in a free market is generally profitable for both parties -- otherwise one of the parties would refuse the trade. The economy isn't a zero-sum game; wealth is created through trading by redistributing resources to those who value them most.
Update:
Director Mitch notes that there just aren't any good bad guys left. But there's always someone richer than you to be jealous of!
The Biblical view would seem to be that greed is always bad. Honest profits are another thing.
All your points are exactly right. What I would like to add is that raw profits in the short term are not the entire goal. It is in the best interests of profit-driven organizations to use a portion of their profits to ensure future profitability.
Customer service looks terrible on the books because it eats up cash with no tangible return. Employee benefits and pay increases also look like a losing proposition if only the bottom line of the current quarter is taken into account. Substituting cheaper parts to increase the profitibility of a product at the expense of reliability and customer satisfaction may look attractive in the short term.
If a company is truly profit-driven, which they should be - no one starts a company so they can go out of business, then they will see these things not as profit-reducing dollar figures but as part of their customer and employee relations investments which pay out big in the long term.
Companies do not exist to benefit society but providing a benefit often goes hand in hand with achieving long-term profitability.
Joel: It's a matter of definition. Many people think that seeking honest profit is greedy.
KoF: Quite right, and many companies give money to charity as a way of raising their visibility, &c.
Plus, it's important to remember that the very existence of profit (absent monopolies and other market distortions) demonstrates that the company is providing a useful service to the world.
That's weird - we independently ended up blogging about almost the same thing, including similar links.
Great minds...
"Miss Taggart says, quote, I expect to make a pile of money on the John Galt Line. I will have earned it."
A word about greed. What is it?
The dictionary defines it as: excessive desire.
Only a socialist automatically assigns that condition to money.
Greed is a natural condition. Haven't we all known someone who went overboard-- who lost their sense of balance? Who's natural desire became excessive; whether that desire was for sensation (drugs), attention, fame, fortune or women? People who's desire lead them to sacrifice love, family, morality and all the other good in life? Who became an object of pity and scorn? Who became a villain?
There is no shortage of "good bad guys." But, you must believe in "good" and "evil" to appreciate them. Most writers and dramatists these days have caught the Post-Modern disease. How can you work up emotion and convincingly portray it to an audience when you think ethics are just an opinion? When you think Saddam Hussein is sick, not evil? When you believed before the war that 99% of the people voted for him out of love, not fear?
The world abounds in "good bad guys." They are just not politically correct. And for the moment, the politically correct control the studios.
LW: Part of the problem is that the politically-correct crowd sees everyone as a part of some group or another; no one stands on their own. If there's a Muslim terrorist in a movie, it's automatically a message about all Muslims everywhere, &c.
Yes that is the problem with the politically correct: group think. That is why, though they love them, they cannot come up with convincing bad guys. Perhaps that keeps them from thinking of themselves as bad guys.
Like heroism, villainy is a choice assiduously practiced. The best villains, as opposed to thugs, have all the makings of a hero, except for a final flaw. They have discipline, courage, rigor and a value system; albeit, one distorted by selfishness and excess. Their prime characteristic is that they are evil; harmful to others by their very nature.
Perhaps, they are impulsive. Perhaps, they are at war with themselves, and their self destruction is held at bay by willing it onto others. But, a bad end awaits them; the chickens eventually come home to roost. That is why we enjoy their destruction so; cosmic justice is at hand. Just deserts are handed out.
The politically correct cannot create "good bad guys" because they don't want justice. If justice were to exist, it would be meted out to them.
The left doesn't believe evil exists, so how can there be bad guys? There's only people who are against them, not "Evil". So for bad guys they pick the people who are against them.
I'm sure there are those on the left fringes that don't place much stock in "evil," but it could just as easily be said that the right doesn't believe in redemption.
The problem, Michael, is that the Left identifies with the bad guys. Anyone who worships power must. They merely lack the courage of their convictions. They revel in the audacity of their heroes, so they become perfect henchmen. There is no miscreant so vile that some leftist won't apologize for.
The Left can't portray a believable "bad guy" because an author must feel everything he puts on paper. He must feel the deadness of spirit, the anger, the resentment-- the hate. If it is to be real, it can't be apologized for. It can't be sugarcoated. An author must accept his humanity, and know that if he had chosen differently, he would be despicable. The author's revulsion is what makes the villain real to us.
A Leftist lives in a malignant fantasy. He is a relativist.; he believes that he can have his cake and eat it too. He rejects the laws of the universe and of human nature; he thinks he can bend them to his will. He is protected by civilization and becomes so disconnected from reality that he forgets that nature is indifferent to his existence. When he intrudes on wild animals he forgets that they may see him a prey. Most of the bear mauling's you hear about are from Leftist trying to play. Bears don’t play.
Bad guys are like a force of nature to the Leftist. They exhibit all that power and casual cruelty. They are fascinating to the left, because they can’t be controlled. Or reasoned with. So, they kiss up. They placate and appease. Instead of running for the hills-- or to get a gun.
LW: That's a fascinating analysis. It makes sense; I'll have to think about it more.
Joel,
Redemption is an essential part of Christian faith and conservative belief. But, redemption is not without price; faith without works is death.
A perfect example of conservative acceptance is the Neo-Cons. Most of them started on the far Left, some as Trotskyite communists. They discovered intellectually that Socialism is logically inconsistent and impossible to achieve in practice. So, they moved toward the right. Some stopped along the way as Social Democrats or liberals, but others went to the opposite of what they had believed before. The Right accepted them because they practiced what they preached. Oddly, they still have the evangelical spirit of the far left.
Can you give me an example where the right failed to accept converts? The republican party is the "party of the big tent" now-- the majority party. It has many conflicting viewpoints in it, but it is unified by the current war and overturning Leftist institutions.
Here's an example of failing to believe in redemption. One of our family friends was married, 40 years ago, to a divorced woman. All these years later, his church says he is unfit to be a deacon because of that marriage.
Also, when I hear many conservatives favor outlandishly long prison sentences, then yes, I wonder about their faith in redemption and transformation. Consequences, yes, but not unmitigated by grace.
My comment wasn't about political conversion.
Joel: I don't know the details of your friend's situation, but I can certainly understand why a church wouldn't allow someone in a position of leadership who has serious, deliberate sin in their past. A lot of it has to do with perception (church leaders are to be "above reproach", which is a rather high standard). God will forgive us for any sin, but in the same way he didn't allow King David to build this temple, I don't think putting a murderer in a leadership position would be wise or godly, for example.
The concession yo make in the Update saying monopoly may undercut the moral case for profits is unwarrented. All voluntary exchanges (even with a monopoly exchange partner) leave both parties better off, though perhaps not equally better off. Fraud (and stupidity) are the only factors that can result in an exchange producing a negative affect for one of the parties. Monopoly doesn't do it.
A monopoly exchange won't leave the economic system better off if the monopolist is unregulated. Unlike in a competitive system where prices automatically force a zero-profit condition on an industry as a whole, monopolists will charge prices that maximize their marginal profit. If I'm remembering the diagrams right from economics class....
Anyway, the point is that unregulated monopolies do impose a hidden cost on the economy because prices are higher than they'd be in a competitive system, and volume will be restricted (due to an artificial cost-based shortage).
Michael's previous cooments on not putting a covicted murderer in a poisition of leadership would mean Moses and the apostle Paul would have been out of the running. Grace was bigger than their past lives.
Mick: There's no solid evidence that Paul murdered anyone, only that he was involved in persecuting Christians. Still, he may have, and we know Moses did, so your point is reasonable.
However, absent a burning bush telling me otherwise, I think I'll err on the side of caution and stick with the leadership requirements laid down in 1 Timothy and Titus.