Twittery: hits and misses
Dec. 27th, 2014 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteI've been playing around with Twitter for a few months now, and it's been an interesting experience. In particular, being limited to 140 characters provides good practice in brevity and clarity; there's not much room to get an idea across, and doubly so if you're replying to someone else's tweet and have to include their name and any hashtags in the response. Another challenge is trying to strike a balance between saying something interesting (tweeting) with sufficient frequency that people don't get bored and move away, and saying so much that people feel spammed and stop following your feed. So far, so good; my readership is slowly increasing, and I'm getting a significant number of retweets (i.e., people think my words were good enough to share with their own readership).
It's hard to know what will spark someone's interest -- or the interests of several someones. Yesterday, for instance, I commented on someone else's dim view of corporate ethics by adding the following to the feed:
"It's been said that [big] corporations are sociopaths. Perhaps psychopaths."
The concept isn't original to me, but seems to have struck a chord. Dozens of people marked that as a favorite or retweeted it to their followers.
Why do I think corporations are sociopathic? It helps to start with a definition: sociopaths tend to exhibit an ongoing lack of concern for others and their rights, often accompaned by a lack of a personal ethical code, or the presence of an unenforced code. There are more technical definitions (e.g., "antisocial personality disorder"), including a detailed list of criteria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. But the basic point is that a sociopath is someone who isn't overly concerned with the consequences of their actions for others; indeed, in the absence of external codes such as a legal system, they may face no constraints on their behavior. A psychopath is basically the same type of person (indeed, the words are often used synonymously), but with the acquired connotation that the level of antisocial behavior is more extreme; the classic Hollywood psychopath is a serial killer. In practice, there's probably a spectrum of behavior, as in the spectrum from Asperger's syndrome to full-blown autism.
Do corporations really meet these criteria? There are certainly examples of socially responsible companies that treat their suppliers, employees, and customers ethically and in a way that resembles how "normal" people treat their colleagues, friends, and family. For example, Vermont's Ben and Jerry's ice cream company has a good reputation. Similarly, Paul Newman's "Newman's Own Foundation" receives all the profits from their sales of various food products, and they have a good reputation as a well-behaved corporate citizen. Unfortunately, there are enormous numbers of counterexamples, including Walmart (which tends to drive small local companies out of business while exerting enormous pressure on suppliers and employees*), many companies that exploit natural resources, and pretty much all weapons and munitions manufacturers. The behavior of these companies is constrained solely by national and local law, not by any inherent ethical code.
* Any company that holds a Christmas food drive for employees should ask itself why they're not paying them a living wage.
So are (big) companies sociopathic? Not inevitably, but far too frequently for my comfort. I suspect the situation could be changed if the same companies that want to be treated as persons under the legal code were required to share the responsibilities of flesh-and-blood persons. Currently, this is strongly discouraged by the Western economic system, which prioritizes profits over all other considerations, leading to the pursuit of profits constrained only by relatively weak legislation. The problem's exacerbated by the fact that corporate managers are protected from their bad or unethical decisions by the legal fiction that the corporation, not the managers, is responsible for the unethical actions. Although there is considerable merit to offering these officers some protection (i.e., from truly unforseen consequences), the current system requires far too much effort to "pierce the corporate veil" in cases of malfeasance. Instead, most often you'll see the company fined large sums of money, with no other consequences for the officers* but often severe consequences for employees and shareholders.
* Although if the malfeasance is sufficiently bad to wake the wrath of the Board of Directors or the shareholders, they might lose their job. It's occasionally happened.
The managers of corporations should develop their own ethical code and follow it rigorously; Paul Newman and Ben and Jerry prove it can be done, despite intense competition in their respective industries. In the absence of such personally driven ethics, perhaps it's time we started pointing the fingers at the real sociopaths, and constraining their behavior appropriately.
It's hard to know what will spark someone's interest -- or the interests of several someones. Yesterday, for instance, I commented on someone else's dim view of corporate ethics by adding the following to the feed:
"It's been said that [big] corporations are sociopaths. Perhaps psychopaths."
The concept isn't original to me, but seems to have struck a chord. Dozens of people marked that as a favorite or retweeted it to their followers.
Why do I think corporations are sociopathic? It helps to start with a definition: sociopaths tend to exhibit an ongoing lack of concern for others and their rights, often accompaned by a lack of a personal ethical code, or the presence of an unenforced code. There are more technical definitions (e.g., "antisocial personality disorder"), including a detailed list of criteria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. But the basic point is that a sociopath is someone who isn't overly concerned with the consequences of their actions for others; indeed, in the absence of external codes such as a legal system, they may face no constraints on their behavior. A psychopath is basically the same type of person (indeed, the words are often used synonymously), but with the acquired connotation that the level of antisocial behavior is more extreme; the classic Hollywood psychopath is a serial killer. In practice, there's probably a spectrum of behavior, as in the spectrum from Asperger's syndrome to full-blown autism.
Do corporations really meet these criteria? There are certainly examples of socially responsible companies that treat their suppliers, employees, and customers ethically and in a way that resembles how "normal" people treat their colleagues, friends, and family. For example, Vermont's Ben and Jerry's ice cream company has a good reputation. Similarly, Paul Newman's "Newman's Own Foundation" receives all the profits from their sales of various food products, and they have a good reputation as a well-behaved corporate citizen. Unfortunately, there are enormous numbers of counterexamples, including Walmart (which tends to drive small local companies out of business while exerting enormous pressure on suppliers and employees*), many companies that exploit natural resources, and pretty much all weapons and munitions manufacturers. The behavior of these companies is constrained solely by national and local law, not by any inherent ethical code.
* Any company that holds a Christmas food drive for employees should ask itself why they're not paying them a living wage.
So are (big) companies sociopathic? Not inevitably, but far too frequently for my comfort. I suspect the situation could be changed if the same companies that want to be treated as persons under the legal code were required to share the responsibilities of flesh-and-blood persons. Currently, this is strongly discouraged by the Western economic system, which prioritizes profits over all other considerations, leading to the pursuit of profits constrained only by relatively weak legislation. The problem's exacerbated by the fact that corporate managers are protected from their bad or unethical decisions by the legal fiction that the corporation, not the managers, is responsible for the unethical actions. Although there is considerable merit to offering these officers some protection (i.e., from truly unforseen consequences), the current system requires far too much effort to "pierce the corporate veil" in cases of malfeasance. Instead, most often you'll see the company fined large sums of money, with no other consequences for the officers* but often severe consequences for employees and shareholders.
* Although if the malfeasance is sufficiently bad to wake the wrath of the Board of Directors or the shareholders, they might lose their job. It's occasionally happened.
The managers of corporations should develop their own ethical code and follow it rigorously; Paul Newman and Ben and Jerry prove it can be done, despite intense competition in their respective industries. In the absence of such personally driven ethics, perhaps it's time we started pointing the fingers at the real sociopaths, and constraining their behavior appropriately.
_The Corporation_
Date: 2014-12-28 02:19 pm (UTC)OTOH, when you write "In the absence of such personally driven ethics, perhaps it's time we started pointing the fingers at the real sociopaths, and constraining their behavior appropriately." my own thoughts include politicians....
Brent Buckner, posting as Anonymous