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Quote of the Day:

I usually wait a few days in between posts, but I just had to write about something I heard today during my extensive orientation/training meeting at my new place of employment. The plant hygienist, explaining all the precautionary measures taken to prevent something contaiminating the food product and thereby causing illness or death in consumers, gave us this quotable quote:

"We don't want to kill anybody, because-"

OK, already warning signs are going off in my head. The use of the word "because" here suggests that the previous statement requires some kind of explanation or clarification. Things are really bad when it has to be explained why being responsible for the death of another human being is a bad thing.

But, perhaps I'm being too linguistically picky. It may be a little redundant to explain why we don't want to kill anybody, but being redundant isn't really a crime worthy of a searing outcry on my blog. He might very well go on to say, "because life is sacred," or, "because we care about all human beings and wish them life and happiness and don't want to have the weight of their untimely death upon our shoulders."

This is not what he said. What he said was this: "We don't want to kill anybody, because that's not good for business."

He seemed like a nice man, a decent man. I'm pretty sure that what he said wasn't how he himself as an individual person felt. I'm sure that the death of another human being would bother him for more reasons than just the loss of business for the company. In order to properly understand this statement, we must realize that he was speaking "coporatespeak" - he was, in effect, speaking as the voice for the company as a whole and not for himself personally.

I don't think any single member of my corporation or any other really is so heartless to see death only as "bad for business." But we're talking about the company as an entity of its own, which is made up of the interactions of a large number of individual human beings and follows the rules framed by the economic system we live in. The company, as a whole entity, could care less about the life or death of human beings unless they interfere with the one thing that the company, as an entity, cares about: a profit. Cold hard financial numbers. Money.

That is capitalism, in its purest sense. People can't seem to understand why the concept of a capitalist economy makes me so nervous. Things aren't as bad as you say, they tell me. Well, they are right. We are fortunate enough to live in a country at a time where there are a significant number of factors in place to dilute to cold hard realities of capitalism to something much more tolerable. There is a significant expectation among the American population (largely, I believe, as the result of long-standing government laws and policies) for companies to be responsible to their employees and to their consumers. This was not always the case. We are lucky. But that doesn't mean we can't be aware of the inherent dangers of capitalism, which can still rear their ugly head today.

Thats all I'm on about really. I'm not trying to incite a revolution, I don't hate America, and yes, its true that I receive personal benefit and enjoyment from the capitalist system. I'm just thinking out loud, thats all. So sue me.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Are the reasons why a company doesn’t want to kill someone really that important? Isn’t it enough to know that a company doesn’t want to kill?

In a society other than capitalism perhaps a company would not want to kill off a consumer because the death would cut down the state’s production. On the other hand, in a Communist society perhaps a company wouldn’t care if someone or multiple people die from its product – it is one less person that must be provided for.

Your point is taken, however. There are problems with capitalism. However there are problems with most every form of government and economies. But show me a better, more efficient, fair, and just system. The spread of capitalism in the last several decades is not solely because of American influence (while it is a major reason). It is a good system that works. As it develops it becomes increasingly more friendly toward the workers. As a result, both workers and owners prosper.
Matt Haws said…
Yes, the reasons why a company doesn't kill somebody are important. Superficially, it may seem that whether its done for money or for genuine respect and cocern doesn't make much difference: after all, in both cases the company is trying to avoid killing somebody. But I'm more concerned about the perception of the world behind the quote I talked about: that human beings, other than those you know personally perhaps, are no more than dollar signs. This kind of mindset can cause problems in other areas.

Any economic system has the problem of treating a massive number of people as individuals. I'm aware that one of the greatest weaknesses of my continual anti-capitalist rant is that I don't have any alternatives to offer. I just get this nervous feeling when I think about it. You see captialism as an evolving system which is continually improving employer/employee/consumer relations naturally. I see capitalism as a hungry force wanting to devour us all, but barely held in check by massive government regulation. We don't have a pure capitalism, the government gets involved, and thank goodness it does.

And by the way, no more political science majors are allowed to critique my rants and make me look stupid. Leave me to my delusions.
eleka nahmen said…
I love that I know a Marxist :D

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