The money addiction
global competition, Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, which had All human suffering come a corporate focus on Wall from believing the illusion Street. The merged company of separation in a world that chose stock value over excelis fundamentally unified. lence, ignoring that making Nowhere is this clearer than a product safe and well prohow money operates. While duced takes time. The result capitalism has always sufwas decreased worker satisfered from the flawed asfaction, and loss of producsumption of “exclusive gain”, tion quality. The recent news the idea of who gets inof parts falling off Boeing cluded has shrunk. planes has hurt the company
A century ago, a corporaeconomically. tion was expected to serve Last year a Norfolk Southnot only the shareholders, ern freight train derailed but the suppliers, the emin East Palestine, Ohio, creployees, the customers, and ating a hazardous material the larger society. This is fire that burned for days, what was taught at the Harforcing evacuation of the lovard Business School when it cal community of 4,800 peofirst opened in 1924, whose ple, with unknown impact graduates go on to shape on the local environment businesses everywhere. and water supplies. This is
Over time, as the economthe result of corporate deics of accounting evolved, cisions to make trains lonthe quantification of profit ger ( 1.75 miles in this case), became dominant over the while cutting safety inspecmore qualitative social valtors and train staff, all to ues. Today a corporation's save money. This is typical entire goal is defined as of the entire railroad indusmaximizing shareholdertry.return. This gets more narrowed, prioritizing short term profits over everything else.
We saw an example locally when MAXXAM corporation used junk bond money to take over the Humboldt county Pacific Lumber company in 1985. For over a century, this company had been economically, and relatively environmentally, harvesting redwood, but Charles Hurwitz had convinced Houston bankers to front the money for a hostile takeover.
He then raided the pension fund and doubled the rate of harvest, clearcutting as fast as possible to pay off the high interest loans.
Big money “now” was more prized than sustainability.
Two decades later, the company filed for bankruptcy.
ENRON corporation was formed in the mid 80's, and rapidly grew to become a significant player in energy commodities. By 2001, it was the darling of Wall Street, held up as an example for all.
However, in October, 2001, it was revealed as a massive fraud, using questionable accounting techniques to make their profits look good each quarter, while hiding significant losses off book. The stock crashed with the largest bankruptcy due to fraud on record, impoverishing all their employees, and some company officers went to jail.
But fraud and bankruptcy are not the only ways companies are damaged by exclusive focus on money.
Boeing corporation began building airplanes in 1917, becoming a major manufacturer during WW2, and continued to grow as domestic airlines expanded after the war, with a corporate ethic of excellence, safety, and ingenuity.
In 1997, facing increased
xclusive focus on money has other adverse social impact as well. In 2004, a second year Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, created the foundation for Facebook, originally a program for comparing which college women were “hotter.” This typically sophomoric, culturally misogynistic goal might fit into a college venue, but Facebook now has almost 3 billon daily users around the world, many of whom get all their news from this source. Online advertisers, and platform algorithms, keep a viewer locked into their screen time, creating a $ 500 billion dollar company. Combined with the explosive growth of smartphones, now almost 5 billion globally, we have seen a significant rise in online bullying, depression, and suicide among teenagers.
Closer to home, the drama around the Palace Hotel in Ukiah results from one man buying a derelict property at a discount, expecting to make a profit by doing nothing, rejecting serious bids to restore the building, while holding out for maximum return on his investment, expecting millions of dollars of tax payer funds to make that happen. Each day the building deteriorates further.
Money is only a concept, totally elastic when manipulated by those in control, able to be created out of nothing, and disconnected from reality for long periods of time. However, the experience of life is much more than that. As long as we sacrifice life for money, we all lose eventually.