"GOT FIVE FRIENDS? THERE COULD BE $500 IN IT FOR YOU" : YOU'RE NOT A PERSON; YOU'RE AN AMOUNT

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

Several banks currently offer “bounties” for referrals. Citibank, for instance, offers $100 to any accountholder who tells a “friend” about the bank and the “friend” opens an account. Its advertising pitch entices with the words: “Got five friends? There could be $500 in it for you.” But Citibank likely feared that “really popular people” with “lots of friends” would “cost too much,” so they limited the bounty to five friends. Wachovia offers $75 for referrals; I’m not sure whether there’s a “friend limit” on their offer. So I guess people are worth more at Citibank than Wachovia. One hundred dollars can buy more than seventy-five.

This whole “cash for referral” business disturbs me. Yet it is capitalism at its purest; it assumes that people cultivate friendships in order to exploit them for personal financial reward. That is the reason it bothers me so much. I do not have friends because I secretly wish to make money from them. I have friends because I respect them as individual human beings. In short, I resent the banks’ insinuation that people maintain friendships solely for their economic potential.

Among many other things, Karl Marx criticized free market enterprise for its tendency to reduce human beings to “exploitable labor power” or “amounts” useful to some economically superior master. In the eye of private enterprise, for instance, an employee is no longer “Fred Johnson,” the nice man from down the street with the model airplane collection who dreams to be a violinist. No, he is a “Junior Claims Clerk (Position Code 45A)” who represents 8 man-hours per working day, which in turn translates (after taxes, wages and costs) to $2,000 profit per week. He might be “Fred” to his co-workers. But in the economic hierarchy, he is an instrument. His labor does not even belong to him. It inures completely to his master’s benefit. In short, Marx argued that capitalism depends upon dehumanization and exploitation.

In essence, Marx made a humanitarian objection. Marx posited that human beings are unique individuals with hopes, dreams, ambitions and emotions. They are not mere commercial objects to be exploited for others’ gain; they have non-economic value, too. I certainly agree with Marx on these points. But it is impossible to talk about Marxism without considering the inevitable objection: “Well, it doesn’t work. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. People want to exploit each other and make money. They don’t want to be equal. It’s against human nature.”

This is the familiar “human nature” response to Marxism. According to this argument, socialism does not work because human beings are inherently selfish and only want to enrich themselves, even if that means trampling on others. To a large extent, experience bears this argument out. In our society, commercial hungers induce people to ruthlessly exploit one another. Everyone works for personal reward, and those with greater power take full advantage over those with less.

Still, is this not a pathetic admission? Put simply, the “human nature” objection to socialism assumes that it is “in our nature to exploit one another.” It assumes that human beings enjoy exploiting each other and—to some extent—being exploited. It assumes that human beings don’t really mind being reduced to instruments and amounts, as long as they get what they want from the exchange. In this sense, the real objection to socialism reads as follows: “We can’t be socialist because we are only human. We like exploiting and being exploited. Exploitation gives us lots of neat things and we like having more neat things than our neighbor. It would be really nice if we all were equal and everyone owned the same things. But that makes us feel angry because we want the full rewards from our work.”

In short, socialism “fails” because human beings lose emotional control when they think that others benefit from their work. It is too much for the human mind to accept. To avoid that emotional response, people prefer the old exploitation system. It might be unfair. It might be difficult. But at least it feels “natural.” It accords with people’s emotions. Hey, people in a free market system might face exploitation. But one day they might get to exploit others. And at day’s end they get to own as many cars as they want and take home their own pay. Who doesn’t want that?

In this light, is it not sad that the “human nature objection” to socialism reveals itself to be based entirely in emotion? There is nothing intellectually better about capitalism. It just panders more effectively to the innate emotional satisfaction that flows from exploiting others and being exploited. After all, it feels good to exploit. So everyone strives for it. Plus they get to own stuff in the process.

This explains why people willingly see themselves as amounts. In our society, people simply do not mind thinking in instrumental terms. They do not mind thinking of themselves—and others—as economic units. True, they also regard themselves as unique individuals with talents, desires, dreams and ambitions. But those “non-economic” characteristics take a back seat to economic viability. If becoming an instrument pays the bills or helps amass a fortune, that is exactly what most people will do. Judged against these objectives, individual “talents, desires, dreams and ambitions” mean little. After all, this is the mental outlook necessary to win in the great competition for the right to exploit others and get rich.

This is not just cynical resignation, either. This is merely the logical consequence of the bleak “human nature” that galvanizes capitalism defenders. The same “human nature” that rendered socialism an impossibility also transforms every person into a drab economic entity that alternately exploits and endures exploitation. This “human nature” reveals an inherent willingness in people to both debase themselves and to act with ruthless self-interest. Humanitarianism goes out the window in this analysis. If this is our “nature,” then it is hardly surprising that banks assume we view our “friends” as potential $100 “cash bounties.”

I suppose I should have expected these sentiments from a private bank. After all, banks are quintessentially capitalistic institutions. They provide capital to individuals, who in turn start enterprises. These enterprises instrumentalize employees, bringing the “investors” capital as a “reward.” In short, banks provide the grease that keeps the exploitation gears turning. They provide the means by which human beings sate their “nature” as commercial creatures. They indulge the “natural” human desire to both exploit and be exploited. It is thus no surprise that banks expect people to regard their friends as potential profit opportunities. Even more insidiously, there are two layers of exploitation at work here. Through their “referral rewards” programs,” banks exploit people’s natural desire to exploit others. In the end, two exploitations result: The man who refers a friend gets $100. At the same time, the bank makes untold interest on the new accountholder. “Everybody wins.” And everybody “feels good about it.” Personality had nothing to do with it. This is instrumentalism at its finest.

People are perfectly willing to engage in this sort of common exploitation. Banks know it. They would not offer rewards for referrals unless they knew people would respond to their entreaties. Economically, it makes perfect sense. But I still don’t like it. I like to think that people regard themselves as more than mere amounts. I like to think that people have other motivations for friendship than transforming the relationship into a check. I try my best not to exploit others, even when it may be economically prudent to do so. Still, it is difficult to escape the “exploitation cycle,” precisely because it is allegedly “part of our nature.” Because exploitation and its rewards provide such emotional satisfaction, it is difficult to fully ignore them. Human beings do not like abandoning things that make them feel good.

Marx was right that there is more to human beings than purely commercial motivation. But he failed to understand the deep psychological desire in most humans to exploit one another. That is why socialism did not work, at least in the 20th Century. It angered too many people because they did not get to exploit others as freely as they would have in a capitalist system. Worse, they did not get to own as much; they felt resentful that their work went to help others, rather than themselves. This failure was not about theory. It was about emotion: Namely, anger and resentment. People wanted to be selfish and the government did not let them. That was a recipe for failure in the 20th Century.

But what about the future? Will we ever escape the seductive emotional intoxication that flows from thinking in exploitive economic terms? Socialism failed in several countries because it required too much hyper-intellectual commitment. It required that people adhere to abstract principles, such as practical equality, common property ownership and humanitarian commitment to one’s fellow man. Those principles offered no outlet for the human emotional need to exploit and gain. As appealing as the principles were in theory, they could not subdue the burning emotional desire in most people to exploit one another, compete with one another and win personal rewards. People were not intellectually ready to surrender their own comforts for the common good. After all, there is no personal emotional reward in knowing that a poor person can get health care. Yet there is an immense personal emotional reward in knowing you just earned $500,000 that belongs solely to you.

Until human beings change the way they feel about personal gain, they will continue to regard one another as “instruments” and “amounts.” The strong will dominate the weak. Meanwhile, the young, enterprising weak will work to dominate those who come after them. Emotion drives this cycle onward. Perhaps emotion will play a lesser role as our species evolves. But for now, people are quite happy with the way things are.

Humanity will have to wait. For now, you are not my friend. You are $100 in my pocket. I think you’re great and everything, but $100 is $100.

THE PROFIT PROBLEM

AN ESSAY

Newspapers often publish stories about corruption and greed. People have an appetite for hearing about well-placed individuals who get caught gorging themselves just a little too much at the profit pot. They relish all the seedy details: The lies, the doublecrosses, the secret cash payments and admonishments to keep quiet. In the end, the public loves these stories because it gives people an opportunity to vent their collective outrage against a villain who “broke the rules” and enriched himself “too much.” After all, only a few manage real success in America; and when they do, they inspire as much envy as respect. When “successful people” stumble into scandal, the public gloats. Finally they get a chance to express their envy. “He profited too much,” they cry. “Now we want his blood.”

Profit always lurks behind corruption stories. “The dream of profit” always provides the initial impulse to scheme, double-deal, deceive, swindle and conspire. Profit sets nefarious gears in motion. But who said that profit is wrong? In fact, private profit motivates virtually all economic activity in a free market system, whether beneficial or not. Without hope of profit, no entrepreneur would take chances introducing a new product. Without hope of profit, banks would not lend money to promising new enterprises. And without hope of profit, inventors would be afraid to invest their toil and sweat creating useful new technologies for everyone else. In short, commercial life springs from our society’s universal quest for private profit. If a person works, he wants a profit. Even the lowliest checkout clerk needs a profit to pay the bills and stave off eviction. In word; profit underscores all economic activity. When commercial actors lose their focus on profit, their balance sheets fail and they go out of business. Even employees must think about profit. If an employee’s compensated labor does not generate profits for his employer, he loses his job. In this sense, profit motivates all economic activity in this country, even if the economic actor at issue does not reap the profit he helps to create.

Why then do we condemn profit in corruption/greed scandals? If we all seek profit in our economic lives, why do we castigate those who win fabulous profits? In my view, we do this because most people have a schizophrenic, love-hate relationship with profit. On the one hand, everyone wants to profit; people live their whole lives seeking profit. But on the other hand—and despite all encouraging rhetoric to the contrary—very few people ever find true success in our economic system. This breeds resentment, bitterness, envy and animosity in all those who work hard for a profit, but never win it. This reflects basic inequalities in commercial life: A few succeed wildly; most do not. While this makes sense from a free market perspective—i.e., success would mean nothing if everyone had an equal right to it—it nonetheless propagates negative human emotions. When a child sees another child with toys, he thinks: “No fair. I should have those, too. How come he gets them all and I don’t.” This is precisely how “average people” react when they hear about a person who makes “too much profit.” Profits are adults’ toys. Everybody wants them; only a few get them.

This may oversimplify the profit problem. But on closer reflection, it largely resolves it. After all, human beings are selfish creatures who tend toward avarice and envy. They want to ensure their own pleasure and success, even if it means denying success and pleasure to others. In a competitive economic system with limited resources, this can lead to genuine social trouble. Competition ensures that “only the best” people make the “big profits” and control the resources. Everyone else struggles for handouts (wages), or perhaps a piddling profit, all the while enriching some economic superior. And because human beings are selfish, they feel resentment when one person appears to enjoy all the advantages, leaving them to struggle for almost nothing. In the United States, dominant social classes maintain the status quo by hypnotizing the population with rhetoric about “equal opportunity,” “class mobility” and “universal success.” These myths convince most people that if they “just work hard enough,” they, too, can win the “big profits.” Even if they barely stand a chance to fend off bankruptcy in our economic system, they still grope blindly after the elusive “success mirage.” The mirage keeps them from completely giving up on the insultingly vain pursuit. More usefully, the mirage keeps them from rebelling against the economic order by fooling them into thinking “they have a chance.” Whether duped or not, most people still feel resentment toward those who make more profits than they do. They simply stay their hands, believing that one day they, too, may finally “make it.” But it is all an illusion.

Corruption and greed scandals bring latent public resentments about profit into the daylight. When some unfortunate politician fails to cover his financial tracks and public realizes just how much money he made in a crooked deal, they unbottle their resentments. The politician may not have even violated any law to make his profit; the mere fact that he benefits suffices to unleash pent-up popular resentments about profit. I find this particularly interesting because it appears that public outrage about “excessive profit-seeking” stems not from profit in the abstract, but rather from the fact that enough people discovered it. In other words, profit-seeking is “OK” as long as you are discreet about it. Scandals break when large numbers of people find out about someone’s “questionable behavior.” If no one discovers certain behavior, it will not result in scandal, even if the behavior is undeniably “questionable” or even criminal. Corruption and greed scandals all involve profit. The public condemns the perpetrators for “shameless profiteering.” But they would not condemn it if they never discovered it. In this sense, the perpetrator’s real error is not profit-seeking; it is indiscreet profit-seeking. No one complains about secret, private, discreet profit-seeking. After all, everyone does that; it sustains our economic system. Yet if a person brazenly makes profits for all to see, he can expect social reproach. The sin, then, is not profit-seeking; the sin is indiscretion about profit-seeking.

As a society, we have a bizarre relationship to profit. I analogize it to sex. Everyone seeks and enjoys sex, just the way everyone seeks and enjoys profit. In some way, we “hunger” for both, even we have moral qualms about our quest for them. Moreover, both sex and profit are “touchy subjects” that demand discretion; we can only whisper about them. We expose neither sex nor profit to candid, open dialogue. No one likes to tell others how big a profit he won in a deal; he worries that he will inspire resentment in those who have been less than successful in business. In the same way, no one likes to brag about sexual exploits in mixed company; he worries that he will inspire resentment in those whose amorous pursuits have been less than satisfactory. Yet everyone seeks both sex and profit. And the problems only develop when there is indiscretion about the subject. This is because human beings naturally feel resentment toward those who achieve success in an area in which everyone seeks success. Still, human beings envy only what they see. To avoid difficulties involving either profit or sex, a person must merely cover his tracks and remain discreet about it.

In my view, this whole discretion complex misses the conceptual point because it mistakes peripheral questions for substantial ones. Why is indiscretion about something worse than the thing itself? Here, we must leave the sex/profit analogy and examine profit alone in the abstract. Objectively speaking, profit-seeking is a much more pernicious vice than sex, if sex can even be deemed a vice. Lust for profit in our economic system leads to far worse social problems than the mere biological impulse to sex. Profit-seeking spawns inequality, unfair competition, disparities in wealth, class discord and pervasive suspicious throughout society. Perhaps worst of all, it disparages human dignity by relegating individual human beings into instrumental “roles” intended to placate a “master’s” greed for personal profit. Given these abstract problems with profit-seeking, we should condemn it more strongly than mere indiscretion about profit-seeking. But that would contravene our entire raison d’etre in a free market system.

Our society, then, maintains its bizarre relationship with profit. After all, if our society candidly condemned profit, it would nullify itself completely. For better or worse in America, everyone lives for profit. We envy those who succeed, but we do not express our resentment until successful people drag their shameless profiteering into the daylight. If they had been discreet about their profiteering, they would have faced no trouble. They would merely have been “good at business.”

What is the lesson, then? The lesson is that everyone wants to make a profit, but no one wants others to know about it. Because when one person gets all the toys, everyone else starts whining. When it comes to profit in our society, it is best to just quietly deposit our checks and shut the hell up. And try not to leave a paper trail on your way to the bank.