I saw the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room today. I basically knew nothing about Enron before watching this movie. I didn’t follow the news when it was going down.
Even though this movie was incrediby disturbing I think it is important to watch just so people have at least a basic undersanding of what happened and why. It isn’t the most well put together documentary, and I personally would have preferred more detailed information about specfic numerical tricks and practices that were being employed. Still, it is very instructive about one very important aspect of society that we don’t talk about much. That is how evil in a society grows by creating a culture that rewards unethical behavior with privilege, praise, and wealth. A culture that indoctrinates people to turn a blind eye and close their mind to the possibilities of whom their actions might harm.
Noam Chomsky once argued that the reason there is a push to privatize education is so that people won’t care about whether the person down the street from them is educated and that the reason there is a pus hto privatize social security s likewise to instill in people a sense that wether their fellow citizens will be able to retire comfortably or have a way out should they end up with a disability should be of no concern to them.
I don’t know if it is fair to say that these effects are in fact the “reason” society has been moving in these directions as Chomsky asserts, but the extent to which our culture has come to instill in each of us an “every man for himself” ideology is unmistakable. I don’t believe most of the people working for Enron by and large were evil people, not even most of the people who did wrong. Maybe a couple of exectives did cross over into the land where they can be called evil, but it took far more than them to make this enterprise possible. Rather, it was a lot of people making choices that were expedient, that were easy, that were in line with the principles expressed by the culture in which they were inundated, and which were in their own best interests. They were by and large able to completely turn away from really facing the reality of the numerous people who were without power in CA because of their manipultions and the likelihood of the many people who would lose their pensions as a direct consequence of the choices they were making. They seriously just didn’t think about it, at least not seriously. Or if they did think about it, they told themselves that this is what the had to do, that this is what society expected of them. I know exactly how that feels, as I’ve been there.
But the culture that Enron represents goes far beyond Enron. Enron in fact seeks like a kind of silly absurd example that no one could’ve guessed would have come to exist. The much deeper problem that lies at its heart is how deeply corrupt the very system we have is at its most fundamental level. The very ideology that asserts that “shareholder value” is the end all and be all pretty muc dooms any company to inevitable evil. Take for example HP who was a company founded on idealism only to find itself embroiled in scandel. Watch Google very carefully, for although they will, I believe, strive to “do no evil” we willl see very quickly I think if we have not seen in it already how fast the profit motive can come to override ideals and principles when it is fundamentally ensconced in the very system itself.
In the movie there is a part where they show the classic experiment of the guy telling the subjects to keep shocking someone and them doing it solely on his authority. The stock market system is like that. It keeps telling people its ok as long as it increased shareholder value. Whatever you do, it’s good overall if it increases shareholder value. And so it becomes a jutification that allows people to do anything. Anything at all.
The worst culprits of this, the places where this culture is most apparent I think is not in our technology companies or our energy companies despite Enron’s ignominous example. I’m pretty sure it’s largely eminating from our financial services companies and related companies. The big walstreet firms, investment firms, banks, mortgage companies, other lenders, and the marketing firms they work with directly. They seem, in my observation, to be amongst the most corrupt companies in the world. Now maybe that’s just an illusion because the evils of Walmart, McDonalds, Microsofts, Time Warners, and Exxons just aren’t as visible to me, but from what I have observed it does not seem to be that in these companies there is a culture that privileges the bottom line above all else, or at least, in most of these, there are forces and principles that fight against this ethic.Whether its innovation, or global stability, or art, or low prices, most companies, I think, are at least trying to care a little more about something other than money.
But in the money business, money is your business, so its no surprise really that corruption would spread faster there and spread outwards. I used to work at a company that worked pretty closely with a lot of these companies (not doing anything important for them, but still working with them). The Providians, Discovers, Meryll Lynches, Bank of Americas, Citigroups. and the likes. I will never work for any of these companies nor with any company that is directly beholden to them ever again. Because even where I was so tangential to their core culture, I could see very clearly the impact the corrupt culture within these companies had upon the culture of the company I worked for and ultimately had on me. It’s almost like a disease eminating outwards, just as it was in Enron eminating downard from the higher ups to the rank and file.
Not convinced? If the trickery that these companies did to prop up Enron didn’t convince you, and you won’t take my own testimony on faith, consider watching another documentary Maxed Out which pretty much shows how the credit industr is literally killing people. I’m not joking. The movie shows casualties, people whose death can be directly attributed to specific policies of the credit industry.
And if that doesn’t convince you, consider what’s happening in the economy right now. The housing market’s crash that will cause (is already causing) many many people thier homes.
It’s all related. The smallest choice to make something seem to work a little better for their overall profits without consideration of the consequences could cause some harm down the line to someone unintended and worse, it could lead others to think its ok to do the same when they need to make a choice.of what to do and why. Those whos interest is primarily in themselves create a culture that allows them and everyone under them to ultimately be willing to justify virtually anything.
To change this system, I cannot imagine what would be needed short of an utter rework of our entire economic system. I’m not saying abandon capitalism altogether, but any system that does not contain at its heart a mechanism that brings out at least some of the good in people will ultimately lead to dire consequences. We’ve seen it and we will continue to see it unless there is change.
