» Responsible Capitalism

I want to be a multi-millionaire! There has never been a question in my mind since I was a child. I think we all dream that some time in our lives. Today, the question is not that I want it, or even if I deserve it, but to what lengths will I go to in order to possess it. Will I start a business and through hard work, determination and quite a bit of luck succeed? Will I make many proper stock picks? Will I win the lottery? Will I skirt the law and regulations of my industry at most chances to garner extra cash? Will I cheat my way through my business life by shortchanging clients? Will I embezzle it from my large corporate bosses? Will I take it at gunpoint from my local bank? The latter may be stretching it, but at what point in the progression do I lose you?

When did our free capitalistic society move from government not barring anyone entry into the free market to capitalism itself barring most entry? Our society was founded for the purpose of preventing large government

We have toiled for two hundred years under a free market where anyone could do anything. Gone are the days when any small family could borrow a small amount of money to open a downtown hardware store or family restaurant. Gone also, are the days when most would even be content with that. First of all, the banks aren’t willing in many cases to loan money for small concerns. If you have no track record, no previous experience, you are not a good risk anymore. A good risk is a large conglomerate with lots of assets that can be tied to the note. Have we not realized that with increased capital and collateral usually comes the means, know how and lack of morality to fight foreclosure to the point where the debt is written off as a cost saving measure? If after falling on hard times, the less advantaged of us would carry that same debt around until it was either paid or settled by our estate.

Is this where local merchants have gone? How many small towns have seen their downtowns die as a result of the ‘new Wal-Mart’ going in at the edge of town where the land is cheap? When these new stores can no longer keep up with their more prosperous brothers what happens? They are closed as a cost saving measure, leaving the town to struggle with no means of goods (cheap or otherwise) within it’s city limits.

Why do the Home Depots, Wal-Marts and Best Buys continue to move into new areas, oft times closing several stores in one are to open up a much larger cheaper to run store to service all of their current customers? Is it to better their community? Provide jobs? Make their owners and shareholders more money? Who does it benefit in the end? Who does it hurt?

I am all for business being able to move in and out of areas for monetary or whatever reason, but can they at least accept some responsibility for those left in their wake? I, like most other capitalistic entrepreneurs would love to open a business and grow it, providing a comfortable life for me, and finally, seeing my children left with a comfortable life as well. At what point do I have enough though? At what point does getting any bigger mean nothing to the bottom line? Only you and I can say that for ourselves. In most industries, there is no regulating body saying you can only be so big or make so much money. In those that do, the levels of capital they deal with should probably make their owners blush at their own conspicuous consumption anyway.

We have begun to see corporations taking responsibility for the impact their operations have on the ecological environment, as well they should. If, in the process of making your money you have a detrimental affect on others, yes you are responsible for damage you caused. Will we ever see that same responsibility in the economic environment? Does the economic harm not touch as many people? Does it touch them in any less damaging ways? Or for any less length of time?

Whole townships can be rendered ghost towns by one financial decision of a corporation with little more ties to it than numbers on a balance sheet. All this to increase the bottom line so some executives can get their performance-based bonuses. Increase the distance between me and you, the rich and the poor, the haves and have nots.

How do we legislate morals? Whose morals? Should we try?

What happened to the fulfillment in being a lowly paid employee? For that matter, what happened to the ability to support oneself or ones family as a lowly paid employee? These days, everyone wants to be wealthy.

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