Can morality be brought to market? | Prem Sikka | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk .
Prem Sikka concludes:
Making capitalism ethical is a tough task — and possibly a hopeless one. Any policy for encouraging ethical corporate conduct has to change the nature of capitalism and corporations so that companies are run for the benefit of all stakeholders, rather than just shareholders. Pressures to change corporate culture could be facilitated by closing down persistently offending companies, imposing personal penalties on offending executives and offering bounties to whistleblowers.
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Unless an army is involved effective change tends to come from within.
I own a video based resource for schools called http://www.talkingjobs.net. This platform could be easily adapted and new content recorded to let representatives of the financial sector talk us through how ethical ‘reformation’ of their sector could or is already being achieved. It could help us, the public, understand how they intend to restore trust. Would anyone from Richard Murphy’s readership, or perhaps Richard himself, like to help me make this happen?
hopeless is really a surrogate for pointless. Capitalism concerns itself with the ownership of the means of production. Ethics belongs in a wider context of the Society in which Capitalism. I guess where you are really going is the rules.
@alastair
If I read the above correctly (which is a little tricky) you are saying that nothing can be done to change behaviours in this sector – all rests on whatever level of regulation you have in place, and that’s about it. In-fact I think you are saying that ethical behaviour in this context is not even relevant — a misnoma. Have I understood?
No you haven’t, Andrew Manson. I’ve had this conversation before.
In Guernsey the rhetoric from the finance industry has stepped up a notch following a Funds seminar on the prognosis after possible EU directives for certain core functions. The local paper reported it as the end of the world, that without the industry IN IT’S PRESENT STATE, then we’ll all be living in shacks eating limpets. Of course the Fund professionals weren’t that hysterical, but constant media representation by the various lobbyists is beginning to polarise opinion.
The effort defend the lack of ethics is showing. There is only so much pretending a polluter can do until the game’s up. It’s up to that polluter to either get with the program or set up in some slum where no one can see them. The justification comes from ‘investment’ arguments and ‘efficiency’.
No system that involves direct human interaction will ever be efficient, sustainable or beneficial unless a whole spectrum of human behaviour and group consciousness are factored in. Capitalism will not work without motivated people. Currently we are supposed to be motivated by material wealth. It fills a gap. But it really hasn’t taken very long at all for the fault lines of theoretical models to reveal the underlying problems.
So there I go saying we must be nicer, and the return is always
“You want to leave no future for your children. You want to destroy our way of life.”
So they are asking me to be ethical towards them?
The fact that anyone can argue against promoting a more just way of managing the urge for cash and the games it generates just hardens my opinion that all this ‘transparency and compliance’ messiah complex the SJs have is one of the shoddiest pantomime diguises ever to grace a leaky, empty civic hall in January.
Stop complaining and clean up your own mess
Andrew, I don’t know if you have misunderstood my point. But is is simple, so if you think it is a bit tricky then probably you have. Prem’s point is tricky, but misguided. Your concept of regulation might well be a surrogate for his notion of ethics. But I suspect he really means morality. I know that Richard thinks morality is absolute, and in that sense I think he is close to Prem’s position. My point is only that capitalism refers simply to ownership of the means of production. Prem is endowing it with a morality or perhaps ethical system it does not and cannot have. It is a disingenuous mistake often made (deliberately but not uniquely) by socialists.
@alastair harris Moving the debate sideways a little (if permitted) I would still like to know whether near total collapse of the banks and subsequent bail out by tax payers has resulted in any kind of change in attitudes and behaviours within this sector, or is it simply “phew, thanks god that’s over” and back to business as usual. I don’t expect unanimity, but am curious about this all the same, and feel that I am not alone. To this end, I would like to form a set of questions that could be put to a possible sample group across various grades and roles. Questions like’ what are you doing now that you didn’t do before?’ or ‘How has the recent crash impacted on your decision making at work?’
Would you/anyone like to help me collate a set of 20 questions or so? I think it could form the basis of a very useful resource for school and college students.
Hi Andrew. Before you embark on this you should perhaps research the sector a bit more. try and understand what different sorts of banks there are, and how each type is regulated – the subtleties of different regulation in different parts of the world. What different business models they operate. And perhaps how many of them there are, and how many of those are technically insolvent. Sounds boring perhaps, but a bit of basic research is likely to be more usefull to students than wallowing in hyperbole.
Many thanks for the dialogue – appreciated.