“Is one not entitled to the sweat of their brow?”

Today we tend to project our value of individual freedom onto businesses, defending with naiveté their rights to free enterprise, which would entail things like: allowing smoking or not, discriminating between customers (class or race), determining any pay level for employees, and determining safety bar for products and their market price. We do this because we imagine ourselves as individuals starting such a company, and we imagine how we would feel if any of this regulation on our business were limiting the fruits of our creation. We created it, and therefore all the fruits are supposed to be ours alone.  We let that wealth trickle down at our own discretion because that is what seems right.  We ask the socialists, "is one not entitled to the sweat of their brow?"  A good response I think is to ask "was it done by the sweat of your brow alone?"


The concept of being entitled to the "sweat of your brow" is derived from philosophers such as John Locke, who suggested that we are entitled to any property once we have mixed our labor with it. Thus, if you farm free land, you ought to own that land and all it produces as a result of your labor power.


The fatal error in judgment:


The debate becomes more clear with successful companies who owe their success to more than the individual who started those businesses. A company does not succeed by the sweat of one brow alone, and because the success of that company is not the result of one single individual, it cannot be treated with the same individualistic freedoms.  In many cases the people who started them are long dead!


The ongoing success of a company owes a responsibility to the sweat of other people's brows. It therefore cannot be allowed to operate on simple "profit-margin" incentives that neglect it's employees, it's customers, or the economy of the state which birthed it.


 
Ridiculous free-market optimism:


The far right's optimistic view of capitalism is historically ridiculous. Libertarians and conservatives have this idea that the "invisible hand" of capitalism, unhindered by government, will naturally and without bias tend to reward companies with good business practices, with happy employees that produce intelligent, and well designed products. But as Lee Hampton rightly points out in an article I cited previously, "[unregulated] markets do not naturally allow entrepreneurs to thrive. Instead, most markets gravitate toward natural monopolies, large businesses that are complacent, not [the] innovative and inefficient." But the right-wing believes the invisible hand rewards hard work and innovation over that of lazy monopolies that cut costs and increase profits by abusing their employees and producing cheaply made merchandise. Where in recent history do we see this rationale work in reality outside the confines of academic debate?


In reality, the market creates only one rational incentive: cut costs and make profits (notice that it doesn't even concern itself with stockholders or customers, those are simply variables). What goes unnoticed by the political right is that free markets neglect to create incentives for a business to keep any responsibility to the civilization which harbors it, the employees it uses, or to design a better product. Innovation is unnecessary when it is not required to increase the profit margin, and in many cases, it really isn't that necessary. We live in an age where most of the desired products are already made and patented, and all property is owned. Ergo, most companies creep very slowly as far as innovation of product, because it costs more to create something new than it does to just paint it a new color. Because of this, most companies invest more in marketing their products than producing new or decent ones. And once employees become too costly, businesses have every incentive to outsource or mechanize labor, leaving the average citizen with no desirable job, or jobs that abuse the employee/employer relationship. Lastly, as we have seen in many countries, corporations have no incentive to really help the state or its economy, unless that state aids in that company's profit. Therefore, when a state's economy collapses, a strong company birthed by that state has no incentive but to close home offices down, and expand their offices overseas. A company doesn't need a green card because it is not limited to citizenship, it is only limited by its economic power. And if that economic power is strong enough, it has no pressure to aid in anything but its own profit margin. Therefore a company can simply use its economic strength to buy political favors to expand its business wherever it seems more profitable.


- Part 2 of this topic here.