Can't We All Disagree More Constructively? by Jonathan Haidt

Author:Jonathan Haidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Point #1: Governments Can and Should Restrain Corporate Superorganisms

I loved the movie Avatar, but it contained the most foolish evolutionary thinking I’ve ever seen. I found it easier to believe that islands could float in the sky than to believe that all creatures could live in harmony, willingly lying down to let others eat them. There was one futuristic element that I found quite believable, however. The movie depicts Earth a few centuries from now as a planet run by corporations that have turned national governments into their lackeys.

Corporations are superorganisms. They’re not like superorganisms; they are actual superorganisms. So, if the past is any guide, corporations will grow ever more powerful as they evolve, and as they change the legal and political systems of their host countries to become ever more hospitable. The only force left on Earth that can stand up to the largest corporations are national governments, some of which still maintain the power to tax, regulate, and divide corporations into smaller pieces when they get too powerful.

Economists speak of “externalities”—the costs (or benefits) incurred by third parties who did not agree to the transaction causing the cost (or benefit). For example, if a farmer begins using a new kind of fertilizer that increases his yield but causes more damaging runoff into nearby rivers, he keeps the profit but the costs of his decision are borne by others. If a factory farm finds a faster way to fatten up cattle but thereby causes the animals to suffer more digestive problems and broken bones, it keeps the profit and the animals pay the cost. Corporations are obligated to maximize profit for shareholders, and that means looking for any and all opportunities to lower costs, including passing costs on to others (when legal) in the form of externalities.

I am not anticorporate, I am simply a Glauconian. When corporations operate in full view of the public, with a free press that is willing and able to report on the externalities being foisted on the public, they are likely to behave well, as most corporations do. But many corporations operate with a high degree of secrecy and public invisibility (for example, America’s giant food processors and factory farms).51 And many corporations have the ability to “capture” or otherwise influence the politicians and federal agencies whose job it is to regulate them (especially now that the U. S. Supreme Court has given corporations and unions the “right” to make unlimited donations to political causes).52 When corporations are given the ring of Gyges, we can expect catastrophic results (for the ecosystem, the banking system, public health, etc.).

I think liberals are right that a major function of government is to stand up for the public interest against corporations and their tendency to distort markets and impose externalities on others, particularly on those least able to stand up for themselves in court (such as the poor, or immigrants, or farm animals). Efficient markets require government regulation. Liberals go too far sometimes—indeed, they are often reflexively antibusiness,53 which is a huge mistake from a utilitarian point of view.

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