Capitalişti şi alţi psihopaţi

Un excelent eseu din NYTimes, despre diversele mituri legate de bogaţi şi de rolul lor în societate, despre cât sunt ei de creatori şi de indispensabili lumii. Eseul pleacă de la constatările unui un recent studiu, care arată că 10% dintre cei care lucrează pe Wall Street sunt clinic psihopaţi(procentul "normal" este de 1%!): lipsă de interes şi de empatie pentru ceilalţi, şi o capacitate fără egal de a minţi, a fabrica falsuri şi a manipula. 

Scrie autorul: "I always found the notion of a business school amusing. What kinds of courses do they offer? Robbing Widows and Orphans? Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Having It Both Ways? Feeding at the Public Trough? There was a documentary several years ago called “The Corporation” that accepted the premise that corporations are persons and then asked what kind of people they are. The answer was, precisely, psychopaths: indifferent to others, incapable of guilt, exclusively devoted to their own interests.

There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself."

Sigur, vor replica mulţi, capitalismul şi democraţia au mers mână în mână, fără capitalism n-ar fi fost democraţie. Şi da, şi nu. Mai mult nu. Democraţia mai mult încurcă, decât ajută capitalismul. Democraţia costă, deci îi reduce drastic profiturile. Democraţia este un mecanism de control al puterii, pentru a o limita şi a nu-i permite să devină tiranică. Marii democraţii capitaliste, din SUA şi din UE, sunt din ce în ce mai goale de conţinut, iar China, Rusia şi chiar India şi Brazilia sunt mai degrabă la limita dintre democraţie şi autoritarism, democraţii "dirijate". 

"There’s been a lot of talk lately about “job creators,” a phrase begotten by Frank Luntz, the right-wing propaganda guru, on the ghost of Ayn Rand. The rich deserve our gratitude as well as everything they have, in other words, and all the rest is envy.

First of all, if entrepreneurs are job creators, workers are wealth creators. Entrepreneurs use wealth to create jobs for workers. Workers use labor to create wealth for entrepreneurs — the excess productivity, over and above wages and other compensation, that goes to corporate profits. It’s neither party’s goal to benefit the other, but that’s what happens nonetheless.

Also, entrepreneurs and the rich are different and only partly overlapping categories. Most of the rich are not entrepreneurs; they are executives of established corporations, institutional managers of other kinds, the wealthiest doctors and lawyers, the most successful entertainers and athletes, people who simply inherited their money or, yes, people who work on Wall Street.

MOST important, neither entrepreneurs nor the rich have a monopoly on brains, sweat or risk. There are scientists — and artists and scholars — who are just as smart as any entrepreneur, only they are interested in different rewards. A single mother holding down a job and putting herself through community college works just as hard as any hedge fund manager. A person who takes out a mortgage — or a student loan, or who conceives a child — on the strength of a job she knows she could lose at any moment (thanks, perhaps, to one of those job creators) assumes as much risk as someone who starts a business."

Da, acest adevăr se aude atât de rar: muncitorii sunt creatorii de bogăţie, antreprenorii creează, sau nu, locuri de muncă. Fără muncitori nu există bogăţie. Şi apoi, cum arată şi autorul, antreprenorii nu sunt obligatoriu şi bogaţi. Bogaţii provin acum din alte zone, şi nu sunt creatori de locuri de muncă, sau nu de atât de multe pe cât se crede. 

"Enormous matters of policy depend on these perceptions: what we’re going to tax, and how much; what we’re going to spend, and on whom. But while “job creators” may be a new term, the adulation it expresses — and the contempt that it so clearly signals — are not. “Poor Americans are urged to hate themselves,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” And so, “they mock themselves and glorify their betters.” Our most destructive lie, he added, “is that it is very easy for any American to make money.” The lie goes on. The poor are lazy, stupid and evil. The rich are brilliant, courageous and good. They shower their beneficence upon the rest of us."

Sigur, putem avea discuţia asta şi în România, dar cine s-o facă şi de ce? La noi muncitorii(în sens larg) sunt priviţi şi trataţi, şi în sectorul public, şi în cel privat, ca nişte scalvi, umiliţi, călcaţi în picioare, sfidaţi de nişte indivizi care cred că dacă au bani trebuie să fie trataţi ca nişte zei.

Aşa că nimic nu se fa schimba în lumea noastră, câtă vreme banul ţine loc de orice...