I had already been writing about what I think the true meaning of a company is when I read this in an email from The Sunday Times this morning:
No one builds their own fortunes.
No one is self-made.
The Sunday Times might like to promote the myth at the behest of, or to flatter, Rupert Murdoch. But the simple fact is that everyone has to work in company. And the bread has to be shared.
Those who think otherwise need to be reminded, often, of the folly of their thinking and, too often, their ways..
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‘Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls….’
While I guess it’s implicit in your comments it’s worth stressing too, that the newest richest man in Britain was state educated at Beverley Grammar School. Our state education system is the foundation of our wealth and that fact needs to be recognised.
Top amongst sins or things not to live your life by is Vanity, an exaggerated sense of your own entitlement! Of course, Attachment and Caregiving Theory tells us Vanity is the outcome of inadequate child rearing that fails to promote adequate differentiation, truly understanding that others exist apart from yourself and therefore rationally you need to work at balancing self and other caregiving.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3471369/
Schofield says:
“Top amongst sins or things not to live your life by is Vanity,….”
Well that’s one thing I don’t suffer from, but modesty forbids I mention the fact 🙂
Yeah but you’re big on hints!
Adam Ferguson, ‘An Essay on the History of Civil Society’ (1767), Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP; 1966, Part I, Section III, p.16, quotes Montesquieu: “Man is born in society …. and there he remains”.
Ferguson, perhaps the first sociologist, recognised better than most thinkers the unavoidable aspiration to be ‘self-made’, and its consequences, but unlike Murdoch and the ideologists of the ‘self-made’, he did not confuse it with solipsism.
John S Warren says:
I don’t have a source for it, but there’s a lovely line from somebody about the ‘Self Made Man’ who took care to attend his local church every Sunday in order to praise his creator. 🙂
All wealth is socially created, so wealth and power can only be obtained by exploiting the work of others – after all, there are no billionaires made on a desert island!
It is true that high-income societies have broken free from the stranglehold of power based on land inheritance ( the old families of land-owning lords who held most wealth and power up until the industrial revolution ). However, the new era of industrial capitalism has perversely created a new and argueably more dangerous kind of meritocratic hubris among todays elites.
The rich and powerful now believe they earned it through their own hard work and enterprise, and therefore feel they owe nothing back to the society from which their wealth is extracted. A prime example is the shifting of assets into offshore accounts to avoid paying democratically agreed taxes in the countries where they live and do their business.
At least in the 19th century the rich knew full well that they only stood where they were, only because of sheer luck of birth. Those that were grateful for this good fortune even gave back in many forms of public philanthropy, but today the message to the poor is simple – if you want a better life just work for it.
This is the only context in which Teresa May’s inflamatory comment actually works “If you are a Global citizen, you are a citizen of nowhere.” The rich and powerful prefer this Global view of life because they think it absolves them of any national obligations and puts them above the law of any national government. This selfish misconception will only be put right once we can build a formal Global Partnership between countries that agree common tax and regulatory standards across the World. Till then the billionaire class will continue to live life on their own terms, regardless of how much they owe to society.
Robert P Bruce
author http://www.TheGlobalRace.net
As always, when you have no answer, when you have no defense, you just delete the comment.
If only your readers knew about the posts you are too scared to post.
They would know what a moral coward and hypocrite you really are.
Drivel about my domestic arrangements is not something I need to post
The Scottish Government held a consultation on whether fracking should be allowed, and the overwhelming majority were against. The company INEOS, based in Grangemouth, is very keen on fracking, and wants to carry it out in both England and Scotland.
The richest “self-made” man in Scotland, and in the UK, is the owner of INEOS. Unsurprisingly, he is a tax exile who lives in Switzerland and has moved his company headquarters there. Recently, he broke a strike at his Grangemouth plant by threatening to close it.
He is now challenging the ability of the Scottish Government to stop him fracking in Scotland, and they are having to waste money on defending their position in court. Perhaps we should ban tax exiles from using the courts to further their financial aims.
George S Gordon says:
“The Scottish Government held a consultation on whether fracking should be allowed, and the overwhelming majority were against. The company INEOS, based in Grangemouth, is very keen on fracking, and wants to carry it out in both England and Scotland.”
Post Brexit (if it happens the way the enthusiasts would like it to) this sort of corporate challenge to democratic government will increase, perhaps increase considerably. Every centimetre we move away from Europe moves us an inch nearer to the US.
We should be deeply concerned at the possible outcomes.