Hegel's Hotel will always trumpet and extol the virtues of corporations, instituations, owners, managers, supervisors who care about their employees, show integrity, dignity, respect, compassion for them, pay them fairly, and usually such corporations, institutions, owners, managers, supervisors are paid back in terms of employee loyalty, integrity, dignity, respect, compassion that is coming back from where it came from...i.e. 'what goes around comes around'...not always but usually....and the overall result is a 'high corporate image and esteem'....
You need a high corporate image and a strong corporate foundation starting from the employees at the bottom of the corporate flow chart, working up the flow chart, everyone valued for what they do, and for the importance of each person's job and career relative to the overall 'humanistic-existential' goals of a socially and/or economically valuable corporation/business/institution...There is a 'multi-dialectic exchange, interchange, and ongoing relationship between self-value, corporate value, and socio-economic value'....
This whole corporate foundation and its image can be ruined in a matter of moments, days, weeks, months, and/or years if corporate owners decide to negotiate their employees wages downwards as far as they can go, especially in times of high unemployment, resulting in short term 'better profit margins'...but ultimately towards the greater and greater 'toxification', the creaking and collapse of 'the morale foundation', the spreading of the 'corporate poision' to outside customers and contractors, and eventually to the 'self-destruction' of the corporation...all in the name of 'pushing short term profit margins higher and higher' while that 'silent corporate poison' -- employee morale and its symptoms: absenteeism, lateness, negative gossip, sabotage, destroying the image of the corporation -- lead to its eventual downfall...
Adam Smith and Karl Marx were both right...
In a 'free market' narcissistic capitalism ultimately starts to destroy itself -- to cannibalize itself, eat itself up to its own self-destruction, at least the self-destruction of the corporation itself ....a shell of a company with CEOs and top executives doing their best to 'parachute' from the company with the best parachute they can find...
The biggest mistake is 'rewarding' them for this behavior -- in effect, giving the 'secret code to the bank vault' to the bank robbers...
That makes it look like the politicians are in 'cahoots' with the bank robbers...
Corporate tax breaks and perks should be given to corporations that treat their employees and customers well -- not to corporations who fleece and gouge both their employees and their customers...
CEOs and top executives parachuting out of soon-to-be bankrupt corporations leaving their employees, contractors, suppliers, and customers on the 'plane' as it plunges to the ground should be taxed to the tune of about 80 or 90 percent -- if not charged with criminal transgressions...
And in the name of integrity and 'ethical capitalism' -- 'Adam Smith and/or Ayn Rand style' -- the worst thing you can do is to give these 'corporate parachuters' another 'plane to fly'...
This, in effect, is 'home-made, government-sponsored corporate terrorism' -- rewarded.
It is the anti-thesis of anything and everything Adam Smith had in mind under the definition of 'Capitalism'...
It is in essence, Capitalism -- without ethics and integrity...i.e., 'Narcissistic Capitalism'...
The ultimate self-destroyer of Capitalism -- or at least Narcissistic Capitalism -- is corporate and/or political greed, power, and narcissism.
The question becomes: Can you separate money and Capitalism from money and greed?
Is Ethical Capitalism an ideal that is worth fighting for, worth striving for, and pragmatically possible?
Or was Marx right in saying, in effect, that all Capitalism is bad because Captialism cannot be separated from human greed, power, and narcissism?
Hegel's Hotel will fight for Ethical Capitalism...
But that requires the self-discipline of all of us to not abuse a good thing...
And 'ethical, political and/or corporate watchdogs' that actually have some serious clout, ethics, and power...and are sponsored and trumpeted by The People, not by politicians above them who censor, stifle, and suppress these Ethical Watchdogs activities...
In this regard,
I give all Canadian politicians the 'Code of Silence Award'...
For demanding that their expense accounts -- funded by the People of Canada -- remain private...
Alas, Canadian Democracy at its finest...
Should we all laugh at the next Canadian Politican -- Prime Minister Harper are you listening? -- who campaigns on a platform of 'government transparency and accountablity' -- oh, yes, and a 'reformed, more democratic Senate'?
I'm out of here...
Have a good day, everyone...
-- dgb, Jan. 2nd, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
