By Steve Dick
The Register-Herald

ANDERSON, Ind.

Bill Gates wrote an article in Time about making
capitalism work for everyone. He called it creative capitalism.
Gates’s vision is to use private capital to help the billions of people
left out of the system; capitalism, he says, “that has done so much
good for this world.” Yes, for the few of this world. After reading the
article all I could think of was a right-wing lie trotted out in 2000 and
dressed for maximum attractiveness: compassionate conservatism.
What’s interesting about Gates’ proposal is that capitalists don’t
like them. Time’s headline is “How to Fix Capitalism” and the
capitalists — those who’ve made a bundle in the Bush years — see
nothing to fix. Capitalism is working great for them. They sit behind
their desks like Scrooge McDuck, peering out over tall stacks of
$100 bills and growling if anyone gets too close.
Capitalists long ago got off the hook about having a social
conscience. The free-market guru Milton Friedman got upset in 1970
during a rare anti-establishment mood in the country and wrote,
“The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits.”
CEOs and corporate boards could breathe easier about their
unmitigated greed, and they did.
Friedman — who has done severe damage to U.S. economic policy
with his profit-driven thinking — said a business’s top priority is to its
shareholders. Then, if the shareholders want to give part of their
largesse to social causes, more power to them. The only problem
is, what the rich consider philanthropy and social causes are life
and death matters for those receiving them. If capitalism is going to
work, it has to make sure everyone is self-sufficient in the system; in
other words, making enough money to not have to depend on the
kindness of strangers.
Remember this old saying: “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for
today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”?
Well, bring people into the system, and they can do well for
themselves for their families. And they won’t have to depend on
cretins who control the cash with death grips.
Gates writes that if companies are going to get more involved, they
need some kind of return. “It’s not just about doing more corporate
philanthropy.... It’s about giving (corporations) a real incentive to
apply their expertise in new ways making it possible to earn a return
while serving the people who have been left out.”
How nice. Be good corporate citizens but tie everything to making
money. Dole out a few bucks here and there to aid the downtrodden,
but don’t bring them into the system because that might take money
away from the bottom line.
Those who were left out were forcibly left out by a predatory capitalist
system that treats workers as expendable, spends millions to
prevent union start-ups, leaves behind empty factories and the
pollution below them so the taxpayers can clean up the mess, and
the sorry list goes on.
The supply-side, or trickle down, economic theory that has ruled
corporate behavior since the gospel according to Friedman (and
earlier) is going to continue its rule unabated because money is
moved to the top where these people think it belongs.
Government’s role in this wholesale social theft has been to stay
away because these corporations buy and sell our political leaders.
Why worry about creative capitalism if they don’t have to?
There is one other government role. If companies are in trouble and
need bailing out, they look to Uncle Sam’s taxpayers for help. These
corporations that scream that any government regulation is
socialism get positively Soviet when they’re about to go under.
Here’s the bottom line in Gates’ sweet-sounding but nonsensical
plea: The only way to improve lives left out of the system is to forcibly
put those people in the system, and the only way to do that is an
activist government that pushes for unions and increased taxation
on businesses. People who live in democracies, who can vote for
things to happen, must vote to improve their lot and demand social
policies that help everyone.
Call it socialism, strengthening the safety net or whatever. Policies
must be put in action that will temper the excesses of capitalism and
rein in the power of corporations to do what they want, wherever and
whenever they want and to keep themselves flush with cash.
Since Friedman wrote nearly 40 years ago, the U.S. has become an
untenable chasm between the luxury of the rich and the despair of
the poor. No corporation has stepped up with a conscience or moral
fortitude to change things. And they won’t unless they’re forced to.
Don’t look for that to happen because they’ve always got a few
million lying around to grease the palms of the whores we elect.

Stephen Dick can be reached at steve.dick@heraldbulletin.com.