Please note that this essay, Business Morality in America, copyrighted in 2004, has just won an Honorable Mention in the New Millennium Writings competition that closed July 31, 2011. It was entered in the Nonfiction category. Other categories were Fiction, Short-Short Fiction (no more than 1,000 words), and Poetry. There were about 1,200 entries in the four categories. This was the only time this essay has ever been entered in a contest. Also, thus far, it has never been offered for publication.

 I hope you enjoy this essay and perhaps even benefit from reading it. I would welcome your comments very much.

EJH 12/24/11

          The Basis of Morality: When I looked up the word, moral, in my dictionary (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, tenth edition), it referred to principles of right and wrong in human behavior. The primary question is whether there is an absolute basis for those principles. If there is not, a secondary question is whether some other reasonable basis is available. Implicit in these questions are two other questions pertaining to the meaning of life and to the meaning of the universe.

           I looked in several communities for a basis for morality, preferably an absolute basis. I began with the religious community because that community often asserts an absoluteness in moral standards even if only based on some ancient form of theism (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or when interpreted on a sectarian basis. But I found that community hard to believe because it is divided against itself and because it can offer no valid arguments for the existence of God. Moreover, the miracles and dogmas of that community seem so out of place in the modern world. They make me want to look elsewhere for moral truth.

           I found that the secular community is usually reasonable but it lacks authority and recognition. What’s more, there is nothing about that community—of which I am a member, by the way—which inspires me, other than the stark logic of its thinking. But let me be clear about this, I love rational thought. The problem is that it isn’t the sort of thing that reaches out and grabs hold of people. It doesn’t win their hearts and souls. It’s a shame that it doesn’t, but it doesn’t.

           The political community is a conundrum. It is undermined by partisanship. That makes that community hard to believe. And its partisanship sometimes defies reason. That makes it hard to respect. Yet somehow that community makes laws which, as we will see below, are an important part of the moral landscape. The political community, in other words, is helpful, but not satisfying. Thus, we need to look further for moral truth and authority.

           The educational and other communities mostly offer piecemeal treatment with piecemeal effectiveness. And parents as a moral force for children are limited by their being untrained to teach, but also by their emotional barriers, job demands, and the generation gap.

           In light of the above, a search for moral truth is discouraging. In the meantime, individuals are left to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong.

           Enter the business community. Because that community involves a large part of the population during the productive years of their lives, it exerts an important influence on the moral standards of the nation even if such influence is not intended. What is intended by chief executive officers and small business owners is to maximize profits. Of course, since behavior in business is profit-driven in a competitive environment, but also because it is easy to get away with, cheating on taxes is pervasive, and so are other kinds of cheating. With respect to cheating, the major question in business is less about right and wrong than about how to avoid detection. Thus, unintentionally, a moral standard of sorts is established. That standard is based on self interest and it is applied as appropriate to the situation. Let us look more closely at that standard.

           Self-interest Morality: Influenced by the de facto leadership of the business community—but also by my own introspection—I want to suggest that self-interest is the basis for all human behavior.

           The term, self interest, does not connote virtuous behavior or nobility of purpose. It connotes quite the opposite. But it does seem to suggest what human nature actually is, at least in the business community. Now new questions arise such as whether self interest is as selfish as it sounds, whether other moral standards might be possible, and whether moral standards differ from one societal community to another.

           Although the business community is marked by pervasive cheating, it is regarded as respectable because it is productive, and bountifully so. It has also become humane through collective bargaining, government regulation, and evolving social attitudes. As a result, for most citizens, America offers an enjoyable standard of living featuring middle-class wages, medical insurance, vested pensions, equal opportunity, and time off for illness, vacations, and holidays, and all accompanied by a social safety net including government agencies and private charities. Thus, the American society has evolved into a good society, and self-interest morality seems to have helped despite its base connotation and self-centered mode.

           Still, the connotation is bothersome, as is the self-centeredness itself, and one has to wonder whether there is something bigger than the self, something grand and noble, to serve as the basis of morality whether for the business community or for any other community.
           The answer is almost certainly not. An intimate look at self interest will show why. The reader is asked to try to imagine an act of human behavior that is not in one’s own interest. After some reflection, the impossibility of it will become apparent. For example, a donation to charity appears to be a selfless act, but it rewards the donor with whatever satisfaction—good feelings, remission of guilt, peer esteem, etc.—might be derived from a charitable act. The old adage that virtue is its own reward rings true.

           With additional reflection, self interest appears as both absolute and relative: It is absolute in the sense that it is inescapable as demonstrated above. It is relative in the sense that, given identical situations, various human beings will act in various ways in accordance with their genetic makeup, but also as influenced by their overall environmental background (including their parental and cultural upbringing). For example, a citizen had been beaten and robbed and lay wounded on the roadside. Three persons passed by, two who did nothing to help, and one, a Samaritan, who did, thus illustrating two kinds of behavior for one situation. However, before judging who acted rightly, note that how a person acts in a given situation may be viewed in a variety of ways, again depending on the viewers’ genetic composition and environmental background. In this case, the Samaritan might be viewed favorably by some as a compassionate human being, unfavorably by others as a bleeding heart, and questionably by still others as someone with a hidden agenda. Thus, the difference between right and wrong can be confusing unless one understands that what is right and what is wrong depend on one’s point of view.

           Because human beings, despite being inescapably ruled by self interest, can act in ways that most of us would describe as virtuous, as well as in ways thought of as non-virtuous, the substantial role played by the business community in producing the good society might therefore be explained. That is true but only partly. The self interest of the business community, like the self interest of other communities, is kept in check by competing interests. Examples are labor versus management (referred to above as collective bargaining), political party versus political party, church versus state, church versus church, nation versus nation, plaintiff versus defendant, police versus criminals, legislative power versus executive power, and so forth and so on.

           With respect to the self, self interest is restrained by one’s own mind churning through all the emotional benefits and penalties one could be subject to ranging from innocence to guilt, pride to shame, self esteem to self debasement, social reward (esteem of one’s peers) to social punishment, philosophical gain to philosophical loss, and so forth and so on.

           To summarize, all acts are moral because all human beings practice self-interest morality whether they intend to or not and whether they know it or not. It is the differences in human genetics and environmental backgrounds that explain the differences in perceptions of right and wrong, and, therefore, that also explain the differences in human behavior.

           Note that if all acts are moral, as I contend they are, then wrong is as moral as right, and morality has lost its meaning. So it would seem, but not quite. Remember that human behavior is controlled by each individual’s point of view as determined by the individual’s genetic and environmental makeup. In other words, morality is relative to the individual, and what is morally right for one person may be morally wrong for another. Thus, all acts are moral if the individuals perpetrating them say they are. The classic example is of the head hunter (the primitive tribesman, not the executive job finder) for whom lopping off a head is the right thing to do but whose act would be viewed by almost all other human beings as wrong in the extreme. Other examples of contentious morality are found in a variety of human controversies such as Supreme Court issues (most notably in 5-4 decisions), political party platforms, teaching of evolution in the public schools, whether illegal immigrants should be treated compassionately, the minimum wage law, and so on. The list is endless.

           The Arbiter of Morality: Now a new question arises: If right and wrong are up to the individual, but only in the individual’s private realm, who or what shall be the arbiter of right and wrong in the public realm? The answer is the law. It determines the differences between right and wrong in the public realm, but also when the public and private realms clash. Note that the law is simply another phase of the aforementioned competing forces that control self interest, but it is the constructive phase, the phase that works things out. Thus, the law comes close to serving as the absolute basis for morality that we all wish for. And no wonder, the law is so beautiful to behold: It is constructive. It is the same for everybody. It is unifying. It is objective. It is in writing for everybody to see and to contemplate. It even changes with the times to reflect our progress in understanding the world we live in. And it is something we can respect, even when imperfect as it sometimes is.

           Philosophers and theologians, eat your hearts out. You have been beaten at your own game by the legislators who determine statutory laws and by the judges and juries who determine case laws. Actually, in a sense, the arbiters of morality are the people who elect the public servants who make and administer the law. Those arbiters are the ordinary people in everyday life, the people who go to the polls. One might even say that they are We the people.

           Self Interest as Harnessable Energy: Let’s return to the negative connotation and self-centeredness of self interest. To be comfortably lived with, self interest must be understood as innate and inseparable from human existence. It must also be understood as controllable by competing interests as described above. Note that floodwaters can cause damage if left alone (discounting the fertility they add to the soil, plus other benefits) but that they can be controlled by a dam and harnessed by a turbogenerator. Likewise, self interest, if left alone, may cause damage, but it is controlled by competing interests and, while under control, is productive, as demonstrated by the business community. Thus, self interest has the virtue of harnessable energy. Recall that Communism mandated that every citizen’s first loyalty be not to the self but to the state. Thus Communism failed for lack of self-interest energy (although other reasons contributed to its failure). Karl Marx would be amazed.

           The Underlying Authority of Self Interest: While all of the foregoing may sound reasonable, the negative connotation still hovers like a dark cloud, and one’s initial confrontation with self interest as a moral basis can be jarring and can detract from one’s self esteem, as it did for me. (It made me think less of myself. It even robbed me of my sanctimony.) The idea would be so much easier to accept and to work with if acknowledged by an authority deserving of high respect. Actually, such acknowledgment has already been made, and remarkably so. Note the purpose of the United States Constitution as stated in the Preamble with such terms as “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, . . . domestic tranquility . . . common defence . . . general Welfare. . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” That Preamble, with The Declaration of Independence as its forerunner, describes the necessities for the pursuit of Happiness, while the body of the Constitution provides the checks and balances necessary for the control of competing interests.

           Note also in the Preamble that these necessities for the pursuit of Happiness are established by “We the people . . .” and further note for whom they are established: “. . . ourselves and our Posterity.” A clearer, plainer homage to self interest would be hard to imagine.

           The Founding Fathers got it right. The meaning of life is to pursue happiness. That is self-evident. Also self-evident is that the most direct way to pursue happiness is to practice the morality of self interest.

           Note that self-interest morality includes religious morality if that is what one believes. For example, if one believes that he or she must behave in accordance with certain religious rules to go to heaven, self-interest morality encourages one to follow those rules. Further note that when following those rules, the religious one is fully engaged in the morality of self interest.

           As to the meaning of the universe, that is left to the domain of the individual and to the other powers that may be, exclusive of the government, as hinted at in the First Amendment. (My own view is that the universe has no meaning. But that’s another story for another day.)

           Yes, But May We Still Cheat on Taxes? Turn now from this political and moral philosophizing back to what brought it about, the cheating that endures in business. With respect to small businesses, I speculate and believe, admittedly without benefit of tangible evidence, that both the IRS, and the Congress that mandates it, are quite aware that business people are cheating in droves. They do little to stop it, however, because some of those owners need to cheat to make a decent wage and because the economy depends so much on the productivity of small businesses. Without cheating, some owners, at least the marginal ones, would be forced out of business. An additional possible reason for IRS failure to aggressively root out tax cheats is the mentality of the bureaucracy such as reluctance to disturb the status quo, and allowance for everyone to have a piece of the action. Besides, if everybody’s happy, it’s not worth bothering about. Recall the friendly tax assessor in Example 11.1 (my book page 421).

           As for big businesses, they cheat too and are supported by incumbent legislators and administrators who, in turn, are supported by big businesses, which strive to keep them incumbent. It’s a bit like the nobles bowing to the royalty, and the royalty bestowing honors on the nobles.

           Looking Ahead: Gazing into the future, America may evolve from a society that is good to one that is excellent. To do so, the nation’s wealth will have to be distributed more evenly so that a minimum wage can support a family and so parents can provide their children the mental nurturing that is so necessary for children to grow into happy, productive adults. This nurturing will concentrate at infancy but may continue through adolescence. Business will play a major role by allowing time off for employee-parents to spend quality time with their children, especially during the critical years of infancy, to cuddle, to tend to, and to love.

           Gazing further into the future, to evolve into a society that is great, America will have to establish a national philosophy linking self interest with the meaning of life, with justice, and with human dignity. Because self interest is natural, but also because the primacy of it is intimately true, it will command most people’s attention. Thus, and with the authority of the Preamble, it can be taught in public schools. But that’s the easy part. The hard part will be to teach enlightenment, that one’s self interest is best realized by assuring the self interest of others, as, for example, in the Bill of Rights. That idea is nothing less than the Golden Rule intelligently understood. The Founding Fathers got that right too.

           As for the public schools, instead of teaching what is right and what is wrong, morality based on self interest will suggest what is wise and what is unwise, but also what is fair and what is unfair. It will be up to each individual to apply those lessons in wisdom and fairness at his or her discretion (not unlike how the Ten Commandments are applied at each individual’s discretion). Equally important, each moral question will find a variety of answers to fit a variety of individual situations and individual personalities. Such variety of moral answers is necessary to accommodate the variety of genetic and environmental backgrounds that are the source and foundation of all human behavior.

           Note that since self interest is primal, it is easy for people to believe while being honest with themselves and with others. Because it is true, it accommodates human nature. It also unifies through its universality. Best of all, possibly, is the psychological advantage of a philosophy consistent with itself and with nature: the minimizing of both guilt and doubt, and the improved mental health stemming from it. Contrast that with religion with its miracles and dogmas that are so hard to believe and that therefore encourage hypocrisy and moral doubt, except when belief is obsessively beyond doubt, and that then encourage sanctimony and divisiveness.

           Since self interest is universal while being subjectively flexible to suit each unique personality and each unique situation, it will encourage individuals to be more tolerant of others, and far less judgmental.

           There will always be those who feel, despite the honesty and the intimate truth of its primacy, that self-interest morality is woefully lacking in its failure to refer explicitly to virtuous behavior or to avoidance of “sinful” behavior. That complaint is justified but it is compensated by the truth of self interest, and by the beauty that emanates from recognition of that difficult truth. Thus, the complaint will simply have to be lived with.

           Other than parental time off for nurturing children, and wages that are both fairer and more sensible, the role of business in a society avowedly governed by self-interest morality may differ little from what it is now simply because self interest already is the prevailing morality and always has been. Cheating on taxes probably will continue, as will other forms of cheating, but that will be up to Congress. One thing that is clear from the conversations I’ve had with business owners through the years is that they all fear audits by the IRS. Even some of those who are not cheating say that the only reason they don’t cheat is the fear of getting caught. If Congress will order the IRS to increase its audits and if it will also provide the funds to do it, you have my personal guarantee that cheating will rapidly diminish. If the Congress will also increase the penalties for cheating, the cheating will diminish even faster.

           If Congress does step up auditing, I predict that a sterner social attitude will evolve resulting in greater respect for the law (presently, our wide-scale cheating promotes disrespect). It could even result in greater respect for the government. And who knows what benefits might ensue including a general increase in the spirit of responsible citizenship, courtesy, cooperation, and far less incivility.

           In any case, there will always be those who defy the law because cheating is so natural, it is usually profitable, and, for some, it even adds to the excitement of the grand game of business.

 
Copyright 2004 by Ernest J. Honigmann

 
Something to Think About: If provided the opportunity, would super-hero champions of justice ever use their super powers to cheat at cards? In 2003, Mike Peters explored that possibility with a gem of a cartoon showing our heroes doing their stuff at the card table: Superman’s x-ray vision reading the pips, Batman’s bat belt hiding a spare ace, Spiderman hanging from the ceiling for an overview, and some plastic-bodied boob rubbernecking around another player’s back. Oh, the destruction of trust, and the infamy of it all!

But such behavior could not last. What’s the point of playing cards if everyone cheats?

So Peters resolved the issue with this note: "Eventually, everyone had to agree not to use their super powers during the game."