A greater good discussion

Two related Comments regarding my recent post, “Is looking out for the greater good reasonable?” (Advice Line, 12/29/2007), edited for length:

“Everyone is supposed to look out for themselves first. Anyone who doesn’t is a commie.”

Come on, Bob. Isn’t that a little over the top?

Is everyone who lets a vehicle change lanes in front of them in traffic a communist? How about if you’re broken down by the side of the road in a remote area. Is someone who stops to help a communist?

If you’re on vacation and you could leave trash on the grass without anyone noticing but instead you take it to a trash can are you a communist?

Or what about someone who donates to a charity that pays for surgeries for children born with deformities in poor countries. Are they a communist?

Isn’t it pretty harsh to label as a communist anyone who helps someone else without receiving anything in return?

and …

Interesting topic. The “greater good” — isn’t this the “values” we were taught as kids?

Just the other day, my nephew didn’t want to share his toy with my niece — he was punished and told to stand in the corner for 2-minutes. We “adults” teach our kids and grandkids this but we don’t live by it.

So why even teach such “good behavior” skills if we don’t take control of the actions ourselves.?We are hypocrites! Do as we say and not as we do!

Sadly, as I have gotten older, I’m finding that morals and values don’t count. Why? Because morals and values require us to do what is difficult — to do the right thing! To go beyond the dollar and show that your “soul” cannot be purchased.

Sadly the corporate world is made up of individuals that believe in the “me world” and not in the “we world”. The wrong people are in charge because of “trickle-down” management policy of promoting those that are so called “loyalist” — don’t think — just do as I say!

I’m not looking for a Utopia — just to avoid the dangerous direction corporate America is traveling. We need grown-ups running companies — not children!

Bob’s Last Word:

Just an opinion: Both commenters need to dig a little deeper on this subject. The bedrock assumption behind capitalist economics is that each individual “maximizes his or her own utility.” Which is to say, each of us looks out for our own best interests, however we define them.

Marxist economics (and I’m stating this as a fact, not a value judgment) asks each participant to look out for the greater good. (And yes, of course, I was hyperbolizing when I used the term “commie.” Nobody says “commie” any more.)

The obvious consequence, here in the U.S., is that when the subject is business success, morality isn’t part of the discussion, except to the extent that it might place some boundaries on the behavior of the corporation.

But even that is unlikely. The world of commerce is the world of laws, regulations, contracts and negotiations. Employees should place the greater good ahead of their own interests only to the extent that the corporation structures things so that employees who do so are more successful than those who don’t.

“Right” and “wrong” aren’t easily reconciled to capitalism. It is an intrinsically amoral system, which cares about what works and what doesn’t.

Throwing away trash, personal donations to charities and so on have very little to do with the discussion. They all take place outside the world of commerce.

Very different subjects.

In business, it’s up to the Board, CEO, and executive team to set things up so that the corporate good (not the same as the greater good) is both clearly defined, and in the individual best interests of the employees who work there.

Asking employees to be altruistic toward their employer is ridiculous, and entirely non-parallel with other circumstances in which some form of altruism (generally “reciprocal altruism,” family altruism or sacrificing short-term self-interest for long-term benefit) does make sense.

Oh, one last thought: Who gets to define “the greater good?” When large numbers of people are involved, as is usually the case in corporate America (and I’m defining “large number” as any number greater than one), it’s rare that everyone agrees about what constitutes the greater good, let alone how to go about achieving it.

– Bob

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