R.K.: So, what are some of the operating principles of corporations that have become operating principles of our society as a whole? Are there particular corporate principles, or values that are the most strongly" are becoming more and more strongly represented among individuals and in our culture?
J.B.: Yeah, I think there are two and the main one is that, when you look at the legal constitution of the corporation, the corporations are legally required always to act in their own best interest. So that's what the law says. And what that means is that self interest is effectively made an over-riding goal for the corporation and it's not by good choice of a manager, or an executive. That is what the legal obligation is- that his or her decisions have to be justified as prioritizing and elevating the self-interest of the company over every other interest be it the environment, be it children, the health of workers, whatever.
And so that's where I drew the analogy with a psychopath. It's that the definition of a psychopath is that they are unable to feel concern for others, that they see social conventions as things to strategize around rather than to internalize. You know that they don't feel equally. They don't feel obliged, morally to obey the law. They'll simply obey it if they fear getting caught. Everything is referenced back to their self interest and their inability to be concerned for others.
And, as a legal fact, that is how corporations are required to operate and that's not some kind of radical or crazy idea. If you ask" go down to Wall Street, or any where else, and ask your top corporate lawyers: what is the central operating principle of a corporation? They'll say: well, managers and directors always have to act in the best interest of the company. So that's just a legal fact. So that's one principle that I think is expanding beyond the corporation and governing our society. More generally, when you look at"
R.K.: How?
J.B.: Oh! How?"so, I was going to say, when you look at our different institutions, our civil institutions, let's say, science or education, if you look at those two areas, you'll see increasingly the question is no longer that that scientist ask" is no longer what is in the public good. Scientists are increasingly not working in the public domain, but they're working private domains and their primary concern is really to advance the interests of the company they work for, or to advance their own interest.
So this idea of science as this public good has very much been shattered into a bunch of individual pieces. Science is now about the individual self interests of the scientists, of the companies that are funding it, and so on and so forth. You look at education, you see the same thing. That we're moving through a period where increasingly we're seeing for-profit companies running schools. We're seeing schools being run on the basis solely of how can we produce workers for the globalized economy.
The whole notion of other values, that we're trying to develop the hearts and souls and minds of students, that we're trying to provide a liberal education that will enable them to think critically, and act as citizens in our democratic society, that's all kind of- oh, yeah, that's all fine and good, but really, what we're concerned about is that they can get a job, some low paying, low skilled job within our globalized economy.
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