Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Good. Great.
Speaker 1 00:00:01 Great. And, um, yeah, just wanna also remind folks, go ahead, raise your hands. You're gonna have an opportunity to ask professor Salzman some questions, uh, and as always, I would very much personally appreciate it if you'd share the room if you're enjoying it. So thank you, Richard.
Speaker 0 00:00:19 Great. Thank you, Jen. And, uh, thank you all for joining. I'm going to talk today about, uh, what might seem like a paradox MBAs against capitalism. Now, MBAs are those who go to business school and get a master's in business administration. First thing to think about by the way, is the a administration sounds very boring. Why would it be ideological? Uh, well the reason is, uh, MBAs, which is a fairly new phenomenon in America. Business schools themselves are, were started about a hundred years ago. Um, but they, uh, tend to generate, uh, CEOs at large companies. So the whole point of training business people, uh, for broad management skills is that these are usually big companies. So the first thing to keep in mind is they're training future, uh, managers of large enterprises. And I've said in the past, in prior presentations about the woke movement, the movement toward the stakeholder view the movement toward a big business as both distrusted, but, um, able to absolve its, uh, sins, if it serves the broader community and the world and the planet and things like that, um, there is a difference, uh, a noticeable difference between, uh, CEOs of large companies and, uh, presidents and entrepreneurs or smaller companies.
Speaker 0 00:01:45 The, the bigger ones, uh, tend to be a more anti-capitalist. And my theme today really, and I'll stop, uh, as I usually do about 25 minutes into this is that, um, business is not and business schools are not immune from the broader philosoph trends going on in the universities. So, um, critical race theory, for example, we know, and other things came out of the law schools, the business schools, especially to the extent they teach business ethics are not as some people think on the outside inherently pro business. That may sound weird, but, uh, but particularly are not pro capitalist. And, um, I'll, I'll say a little, um, more about that, but just to give, uh, some background, just to give you a sense of just some headlines, just some recent, uh, articles by business, school, professors and other observers on this. I, I go back only about 10 years in a, uh, symposium on the fortunes of capitalism, a professor, Peter Lorenze business schools capitalism's last stand.
Speaker 0 00:02:51 Now notice that notice that that's from society, the journal of society, um, that everyone's against capitalism and the only holdouts must be in the business schools. Now here's one from 2016 Harvard business review from, uh, Nick Torres, quote, MBAs are more self-serving than other CEOs. This is an interview of a, a researcher, Dan Miller who, uh, studied, uh, uh, 444 CEOs over many decades and looked at their performance and found that those and distinguished those that had MBAs and those that didn't have MBAs. And according to Miller, the ones with MBAs performed badly and engaged in, uh, self-serving behavior that benefited themselves, but hurt their companies. Now, fast forward a little bit now 2018 from a podcast called capital isn't. It's not capitalism capital isn't by an egalitarian as ALS and, and Bethany McClain, the moral case against the NBA. Now here, they're interviewing Duff McDonald who had just written a book called the golden passport, the limits of capitalism and the moral failure of the NBA elite. Then I get that the moral failure. Now from that interview, the author said, quote, MBAs and CEOs have dropped the ball. I fall into the camp that says the purpose of a corporation is to give us a way to work communally, to achieve our communal objectives. The system we have today that camp out in the eighties and nineties, and instead was tilted toward the shareholder in an obscene and unfair and unsustainable way.
Speaker 0 00:04:45 So the shareholder, if, you know, from my prior podcast, the shareholder owns the company and it's an obscene thing. She says for, um, managers of corporations to, uh, work for the owners. They have to work for the community. That is the new God society, the secular God. Now here's the Harvard Crimson 2019 quote. This is the headline lack of trust in the capitalist system is Harvard business. School's biggest challenge says Dean <laugh>. Well, you can just imagine what that one was Dean of the Harvard business school is saying. Uh, wow. Uh, it's a real challenge here. There's a lack of trust in the capitalist system when we're producing future of capitalists. So part of this story is, uh, to tout a new course at the business school called reimagining capitalism. You can imagine what the reimagining is. It's basically to get rid of it. Now here's Glen hubber.
Speaker 0 00:05:49 Glen Hubbard is a prominent economist as head of the Columbia business school. Now as teach taught there for many years, served in many administrations, I think served in the Bush administration, Bush w this is in the Atlantic January of this year, quote, this is the title of the Atlantic by Hubbard E business school students have doubts about cap unquote, next. He reports on this and sees a trend over the years and claims to be surprised about this perplexed. And the essence of the essay is that, well, you know, I teach them how profitable and efficient and productive as capitalist system is, and they don't seem swayed in the least. They seem to be very perturbed about its, uh, inal unequal results. Uh, the capitalism's benefits should be, uh, more evenly distributed. So hubber, doesn't even question any of that. He's just thinking, wow, I'm in business school.
Speaker 0 00:06:48 I'm not supposed to be dealing with ethics and morals and politics and stuff like that. I, I don't know what hit me, but I think even the phrase, even my business school students is interesting. What, why should they be different Glenn Hubbard? Um, and then Washington post just last week, uh, Allison Schrager quote America's MBAs are the latest skeptics of capitalism, somewhat referring to Hubbard's case, but also elaborating now, just on the, the couple of things about this seeming paradox, you, you may not know this, but it's, it was a premise of marks and it's still latent almost everywhere marks, uh, from the mid 18 hundreds, have the view that your economic position determine your ideas, the, the relationship you had to the means of production determine your ideology. Uh, and, and so from that, it felt, and, and also there's antagonism course, he, in his economics, he said, there's an inherent antagonism between labor and management, the management, the, uh, capitalists, uh, you know, not the manual laborers, not the ones getting their hands dirty, not the ones with blue collars on, but white collars are exploit, uh, the quote unquote real workers.
Speaker 0 00:08:12 And so there's an inherent antagonism. Um, but, but the idea was, uh, if you're a capitalist you're pro capitalist ideologically, if you have, in other words, your bank account, so to speak your financial status determines, and, and if you're a worker who's being explored you're anticapitalist, so today's phenomenon would be completely incomprehensible to marks. If he saw someone like George Soros or bill gates, um, you know, multi-billionaires who are anticapitalist and then they see a truck driver or the, the waiter at the local diner, you know, pro-Trump or something like that, pro capitalist, that, that just doesn't fit their model, but it's relevant here because of all the people coming out of the universities, what would that premise, uh, lead people to think that, well, uh, maybe sociology departments, maybe poly sci departments would produce anti capitalists, but certainly less. So econ, lots of essays out there are econ students inherently more selfish than other students, you know, because they're taught about the economic system, but certainly in the business schools where it's not just economics, but running it business enterprises, they're the idea is, well, they must be in favor ideologically of the system that they're working in.
Speaker 0 00:09:31 And that just isn't true. It just, isn't true. But I'm trying to explain why the, uh, this phenomenon exists. Now, another reason I wanted to speak about this is, uh, when we speak separately about the phenomenon as I have in the past of woke CEO CEOs who are not, uh, focused on, uh, uh, working for shareholders, maximizing profits, maximizing share shareholder value, the stock price, things like that. This is one of the reasons, one of the reasons is the business schools themselves have become infected with anti-capitalist in particularly anti egoist, uh, ideas. Now in business school, I went to business school in the mid eighties, uh, at New York university. So I got my MBA. And in typically, if, you know, if you get an MBA, you specialize either in, within the MBA, you specialize in some, in either, uh, well, management is one thing, but obviously things like, uh, marketing or finance or manufacturing, which is less common accounting.
Speaker 0 00:10:38 And, uh, but they would, I remember at the time you had to take a course besides all those more business oriented ones, you had to take a course called the legal and social context of business, the legal so, and social context of business. And I remember, you know, the idea was, well, uh, it isn't enough just to manage your enterprise. You future professional business people, uh, are gonna climb up the ranks. They're gonna have to know how to deal with, um, legal matters. Well, obviously, but more what they really meant was regulation and government and things like now in the mid eighties, the us was moving toward capital. It was moving toward deregulation in Britain as well. So the Reagan Thatcher revolution of the eighties and nineties, I, I was going to business school in, in an age when things were freeing up and we, we were not taught how to handle, you know, massive government interventions in the economy, which have happened since.
Speaker 0 00:11:33 And I was particularly in banking at the time. I was at the bank of New York on wall street. So had, had I even the imagine if someone had told me, you know, by 20 oh by 2008 big bank bailouts by 2020, the government was basically taking over the banking system. Um, I'm not sure I would've believed it, but, uh, as a result, you can imagine what's being taught in business schools, how much different it would be. Um, not, not, you know, in, in 2005, let alone in 1985, when I went, this is where the, the woke CEO things coming. Now, if I'm right, there's a lag, of course, if you're an MBA who starts small in a business, it takes, you know, could take 20 years to get to the corporate suite. So the cor the CEOs we're seeing now came out of the business school say roughly 20 years ago, that would be, you know, 20, uh, 2002, 2002.
Speaker 0 00:12:27 So even before the financial crisis, and, uh, you can imagine the ones being trained now, uh, if things don't change, it's gonna be pretty bad. These, these CEOs are gonna get worse and worse and worse. And they're going to, by that, I mean, they're going to more and more be willing, eagerly, unapologetically, unabashedly to sacrifice the interest of the owners of companies and serve their masters on, uh, K street and, uh, in Washington and at the, uh, uh, the woke forums in, uh, Switzerland and everywhere else. So they they're, they're, they're moving, I I've done this separately. The stakeholder model of capitalism is being taught in the business schools. Your job is not to serve shareholders or, or the, you know, that's one of the constituents, but let's severely diminish that role. There's a constellation of others. You must be serving a conatation of others, a government, and then workers and employee.
Speaker 0 00:13:25 And I mean, workers and employees and customers come on. I mean, companies have already, for years had a self-interest in, in those cuz they can make money, which is, which is fine. And so, so the, the, the, uh, sanctimonious posturing of those who say, well, corporations today should really, you know, spend time, uh, uh, making sure their customers and their employees and their suppliers are happy. Obviously they've been doing that. There's nothing in incompatible with, with, uh, that motive. No, really the motive here is to go beyond that, to, uh, people who have nothing to do with the corporation don't own the corporation, but want to control it. So this is a, this is like backdoor Marxism, instead of seizing the means of production instead of laborers rising up as they didn't do to seize the means of production. Cause they were so pissed off here's the argument is let's sit, let's set up a model where everybody takes over the corporation.
Speaker 0 00:14:22 It's like the little push-ins taking over the giant, you know, a bunch of, uh, small little cuts and just eat the corporation alive and then even better train a who cadre of future CEOs who will do it from within who from within won't even be fighting this model and, uh, unabashedly SA unabashedly. Adulterating the fiduciary duty, uh, in a good sense, by the way, the fiduciary duty, if you are holding assets in trust and you have been hired to, uh, preserve and grow those assets, it's an irresponsible violation. It's almost criminal that you dissipate the assets and that's what these corporations are being told to do. And they're being applauded for it. No, no one is criticizing them for basically turning their attentions away from the actual owners of the company.
Speaker 0 00:15:16 Now, if business ethics is not gonna be substantially different than, um, regular old ethics, you're gonna have things like we've had money is the root of all evil or as mark stock profit is theft. I mean, built into these old concepts, uh, are the, are that the very thing that business pursues is vicious is evil. And the only justification they can give is not a self-interested one, but a collectivist altruist. One, at least we're serving society. At least we're serving the broader community. And if we aren't found serving the broader community, then we're guilty, guilty is charged. Let's be taken over. Let's be told what to do. Uh, they won't seize the means of production necessarily. We'll just be told what to do and we'll agree wholeheartedly. That's the fascist model now. And now another example of this would be prices are set arbitrarily. We're seeing that today.
Speaker 0 00:16:14 Why are, why are gas prices going up? Putin? Did it, uh, why are gas prices coming? You? Exxon is, uh, profiteering. Uh, shell is, uh, price gouging. It there's a premise out there that prices are not set by supply and demand by the law of supply and demand. They're set by greedy bastards and when prices are low and they're not going anywhere, allegedly these greedy bastards they're being altruistic. And then they rise up every once in a while and become more greedy. I mean, it's just so cartoonish and so ridiculous, but there it is. But another one you see is, uh, this is kind of an old one, but I'll just throw it out there. Advertising, advertising, and commercialization and commodification, it's all lying, cheating, manipulation, stealing, um,
Speaker 0 00:17:08 Couple of other quotes, uh, on CEOs. Uh, this is, this really tops it off and I can, this got other things, but we, we focus here on CEOs and Forbes magazine, 2019, the psychopathic CEO, if you just put, if you just Google CEOs or sociopaths, just Google, you would be, I hope you would be shocked to see hundreds of articles and essays about that. Some of them, you know, repetitive, cuz they're leveraging off of and summarizing journal articles. But these aren't just journalistic. These are academic journal articles, either from psychology journals or, or social behavior journals. And one after another, you can see the bigotry, you can see the bias, you know, since these people are pursuing the profit motive, this is kind of the logic. And since the profit motive is a commercial manifestation of self interest, it must be evil. It must lead to terrible results.
Speaker 0 00:18:15 So studies have allegedly shown that CEO now, not just NBA CEOs, this is just CEOs, our psychopath. Another one from Forbes magazine. Senior executives are more likely to be psychopaths. There's another essay here where they're debating whether they're psychopaths or sociopaths. So there's a distinction to be made. Uh, CNBC that's a business, uh, network one in five business leaders are psychopaths. Here's why now, by the way, when you dig down and say, what are they talking about? Are, are the mass, are we missing the mass murderers or apparently CEOs running around the, they, they literally will say things like aggressive and you're competitive and you know, rose up the ladder quickly. And, and uh, you shake your head as to why would that be psychopathic? But there you go. Uh, fortune magazine, 2021 psychopaths and corporate leadership. It's time to take it seriously, business insider 2017. Here's why CEOs often have the traits of a psychopath.
Speaker 0 00:19:26 Um, you get the idea, uh, I just want to, uh, say tout something I wrote about seven years ago, very relevant to this. Uh, and, and, and one way of interpreting all this craziness, I, I wrote something called common caricatures of self-interest and their common source. That's in reason papers, uh, 2015 common caricatures of self-interest. Now these characters, caricatures, these kind of, kind of cartoonish, distorted, uh, presentations of self-interest definitely run right to the business student and the business, uh, the MBA and the future CEO, a and among the things I named were that, uh, to be self-interested is to be ATIC, you know, not care about any one else, just be all alone by yourself or to be myopic myopic, just short range range of the moment you'd lie, cheat and steal, you know, to get quarterly profit, uh, sadistic antagonistic. Another one is automatic.
Speaker 0 00:20:28 It's assumed that people are a automatically self-interested. They don't even have a choice in the matter that wouldn't be a moral issue, but that's not true either. We know that people have to learn how to be self interested and rationally pursue it. The common source I pointed out for these caricatures is a lack of reason on, on every level. If you ever come across a kind of outlandish over the top cartoonish characterization of what self-interested behavior would be, look, if you look very closely, it's not rational. It literally is not rational. It's not, it's not behavior where people are thinking through thinking through who else they might deal with thinking through their reputation, thinking longer range, realizing that they're, self-interested maximized by being long range, not short range, all those kind of things. Um, that that solves it, uh, to some degree. Now I just wanna leave on a, a somewhat, a positive note.
Speaker 0 00:21:24 There are a couple of, uh, objective books, or I should say books by objective, uh, particularly on business and on profit and the moral aspects of this. And they're really very good and they're fairly recent too. So the first one is by Robert White. So I highly recommend it, the moral case, uh, for profit maximization, the moral case for, uh, profit maximization. That was, uh, 2020s. That's fairly recent. And, uh, another really good one Yanna wo session. I'll spell it, how to be profitable and moral, a rational egoist approach to business. So Yna taught for many years at the university of Calgary business school, long term objective is very good. Her last name w O I C E S H Y N wo session Yana, uh, J a a N a very good. And also if you get access to, uh, articles in, uh, journals and elsewhere as she has a website, as well as you to look through that.
Speaker 0 00:22:34 So I that's all I'm gonna say right now. I think the, I sum it up by saying for those looking for the tributaries into woke corporations today, the anti-capitalist angle of large corporations today, one source of this is business schools and getting an MBA. And no one should think that business schools are necessarily pro-business. I mean, I'm not saying they're, you know, ly anti-business to the extent they actually teach business skills and management skills. They are thankfully contributing to a Cadra of actual professional managers, which large corporations need importantly. But the problem is the real big, big problem is the moral and political stuff they're being taught. And again, the moral political thing being, you should question self-interest, you should be, uh, serving the broader community. You should not be focused on serving, uh, and working for the owners of the company who hired you, the shareholders.
Speaker 0 00:23:38 And, uh, more than that, you should be. And again, this is what's being taught in visit. You should be deferential to, uh, state officials who are trying to take over your business. Well, not your business, the business of your owners, um, be deferential to government intervention, don't fight back on government intervention, find ways to accommodate the status coming at you find ways to appease and fund if necessary things like black lives matter or things like, um, the world economic forum, uh, you actually use corporate resources to feed the parasites who are trying to eat the corporations alive. This is what's going on. It's very troubling. There are ways to fight back, but, uh, that's really all I wanted to talk about today. One last thing is a very funny thing. It's a very funny essay. I, I found from, uh, a professor at, to Paul in, uh, Chicago, uh, Darrell cone, uh, a woman Dar cone and, and is called, is business ethics and oxymoron.
Speaker 0 00:24:42 Yeah. And she says, um, quote, I've taught business ethics for 10 years and I'd be a rich woman today. If I had a dollar for everyone who said to me, business ethics, isn't that a contradiction in terms ha ha ha. Sometimes business people make this comment, but more often the skeptics are people outside of business. She goes on. Now this isn't, she's not so bad. She basically says it's pretty bad. But she basically says, uh, corporations and, uh, managers should serve. The community, says she's not one of these people who wanna tear the corporation down and burn it to the ground. But, but that's another way of looking at this. The very fact that that would be a common refrain. That that would be a common, uh, comment to anyone who even uses the word business ethics. And, and what is it really? It's ethics is altruism. That's just, they just think of that's what ethics is. You're supposed to serve others and business. Wait a minute. Business is profit maximization and the profit motive. And that sounds selfish. That sounds egoistic. So you can see why they would think there's an oxymoron, but only because they think self-interest is not moral.
Speaker 0 00:25:50 Okay. I'll stop.
Speaker 1 00:25:53 All right. Excellent. Um, well, uh, I've seeing a couple people raising your hands. Go ahead. Raise your hands, bring you on David. Just go ahead, David. Well,
Speaker 3 00:26:16 I just, I have a quick one. Uh, I think maybe hopefully a quick one. Um, what Richard, what you're saying is even more depressing than I realized, and I've read some of these things, but not the more recent things you're citing. Um, but I'm also aware that, um, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about Andrew Carnegie's gospel of wealth in the late 19th century where, you know, he, he, he said, in fact that, um, I actually have a quote here. Um, surplus wealth is a sacred trust, which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. And so he's giving away the moral game there, uh, right from the start and that's been true. So I mean this, this altruism business is, uh, questionable cause of altruism and it has to be discharged. We have to launder our wealth by giving it away is, uh, goes back a long way.
Speaker 3 00:27:16 The difference is I guess, that in his era, the, uh, the outlet for that was private philanthropy, which at least is voluntary. And, um, uh, you know, it can be, um, handled and set up things like the Carnegie foundation with some rules and, and, uh, um, um, some, some degree of rationality in what they do, but as opposed to now, what you're, what, what you've been describing is a lot of people who say, you know, the, the, the state is the, should be the object should be the controller and the recipient of that gospel of wealth, the wealth that Carnegie was talking about is that I'm just wondering this, this, the moral issue seems to go back a long, long way, um, as if the capitalism, uh, and the indu, the entire GU industrial revolution took place without anyone thinking about the morality or changing their views about the morality, but it has, we've gone from a state of private philanthropy to government regulation, government, um, control corporations, and so forth. Is there, is there something that will explain that, um, that, that change, um, from the private to the, you know, state control?
Speaker 0 00:28:51 Well, the that's a good point, David, and I see, I, I know what you're talking about and I think the major difference, well, let's say what's similar, first of all, the Carnegie approach of justifying wealth creation. And by the way, the issue is not really wealth creation. What they really resent is wealth accumulation the building up of wealth, right? Then you start getting states and inequality. And, but, but the difference is, I would say this Carnegie makes his own wealth. There is no question that in the making and in the living years, so to speak, it's all self-interested, and it's all, you know, served a shareholder, whether it's himself or share. And here the argument is, but when you die and before you die, give your stuff away. Yeah. Yeah. First to family, but then libraries and yeah. So the whole thing that Carnegie hall and Carnegie libraries there, the idea was, um, not mixing the two, it, it was like two realms I'm alive.
Speaker 0 00:29:50 And now I'm self interested in profit seeking and I'm acute landing wealth, but now I'm about to die. And I shouldn't just give it all to my kids that would be selfish. Um, give it to the community. The difference today is they're basically saying while you are making it, give it away, or they're actually saying don't make so much, don't maximize pro they're telling corporations, see what I'm saying? They're not saying to corporations make a boatload of money, but make sure in your will, or when you leave as CEO or whatever, you know, however you wanna put it. No, the issue now is no, you must, you must be doing this while you are working and you must be working every day, not to the accumulation of wealth for the benefit of the owners, but for the, all the reasons I said, all the non-owner and stuff like that.
Speaker 0 00:30:36 And certainly idea of don't maximize profit. They're they're not only not saying don't maximize profit and then give it away when you die. They're saying don't maximize profit now while you're managing the company, do it now. So I think that's a, a major difference, David. Although if you wanna look for a counterpart of Carnegie in the current context, um, there is something called the giving pledge. If you look up the giving pledge, it, this was something done. I think more than 10 years ago, Ted Turner, Warren buffet, bill gates, and other billionaires got together, coordinated this, they got together and said, uh, you know, I think Oprah Winfrey was in there as well. David Rockefeller and they, and they were making a, a commitment to do what Carnegie said should be done. And the argument was not enough where, you know, and, and the idea was they were trying to embarrass people into, Hey, Hey, billionaire, you're not in the giving pledge.
Speaker 0 00:31:30 You're not in the giving pledge or how selfish of you, aren't you committing to give it away to now, now that's a, that was actually kind of like old fashioned Carnegie type approach. And, and that, that is, you know, that is so passe now that that is just nothing that today, those, all those people, if you think about who I named buffet, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, all those people, while they were rising up in their careers, they would've been stripped alive, you know, and not being able to accumulate their wealth. So, uh, that that's the distinction I would make. I hope it's. So I don't think the distinction is it used to be, we gave this away voluntarily, and then we shifted into the state, taxed us to death and gave it away itself. That obviously did happen. But I, but what I'm focused on here is what are business people actually being taught to do? And what are they being convinced is moral. And that, that is a big shift, I think.
Speaker 3 00:32:23 So could we, uh, uh, is an aspect of that that used to be, we collectivize the product when, uh, you know, of great wealth, we collectivize the result and now they're talking about collectivizing the process.
Speaker 0 00:32:36 No, that's a good distinction. Yeah. POS yes. Yeah. The
Speaker 3 00:32:42 More, okay. That's great. Thank you.
Speaker 0 00:32:43 That's a big difference. Yeah. I had to think about that a little more. David. That's good. Yeah. Um, I mean, and people know, people know, uh, that in the forties and fifties, the other big phrase was corporate social responsibility. So that was the beginnings of what we're seeing now. And then it was just, I mean, then, then it was just something as simple as don't be irresponsible, don't, uh, you know, pollute the local river or, uh, you know, don't, uh, whatever, use your munitions to start wars and stuff like that. So that was more, uh, but now it's no, you must sacrifice the company to all these others. And that's what the whole ESG thing is. If you look up ESG, these companies are making ESG pledges, environmental, social governance, um, the S E C the securities in exchange commission now is forcing companies to spend millions of dollars reporting on their, you know, carbon footprint reporting on how they're contributing to social justice, uh, movement and stuff like that, and, and putting it in their financial reports, uh, for monitoring.
Speaker 0 00:33:53 And, um, so that's, that's how extensive it's becoming Freedman. The, the great free market economist, Milton Friedman in 1970 in the New York times famously defended the, the corporate shareholder model by saying, uh, the social responsibility of businesses to maximize profits. And if you just look that up the Freedman shareholder model that has been denounced and, and, uh, criticized and rejected, especially when there was a 50th anniversary of it in 2020, there was a string of articles, almost none of which defended that model called the shareholder model. Uh, all of them denouncing it. And many of them MBAs business students, CEOs denouncing it.
Speaker 3 00:34:39 Thanks.
Speaker 4 00:34:43 Thanks you flashbacks. When was C and just suffering through policies that just didn't make sense. Um, once upon a time, like early in my career, uh, people that were very philanthropic would, they would want to advance their career, make more money. So they could then use that excess money to, uh, you know, to, to do the things that they wanted to do, whether it was in their community or whatever special interest that might be. Uh, and they understood that you had to, you had to do the work, you had to put, bring the value, and then you could take, uh, take the excess from that and, and go do what you wanna do. Um, and, and in this model where corporations are, you know, pandering to a certain, uh, you know, culture, uh, they will set up things like, uh, where they will match funds.
Speaker 4 00:35:38 So if an employee wants to give to a particular nonprofit, they will submit that to a committee that would then review that and then release matching company funds, uh, into those, into those charities, uh, which was supposed to encourage people to, uh, to give more into their community. The problem was the gate keeping on which ones you could do. I could tell you just a couple off the top that I tried to give to with matching funds. And that was, oh, which is young Americans for Liberty that was rejected. Oh, we can't give to a political, uh, and then, uh, 10th amendment center, which for the same reason. Uh, so, so a politically motivated thing was shot down, but yet I guarantee that majority of the things that they were funding had a political bent as well. So it, it's very interesting how they gate keep these things. And then, and then the other part of it is when the company starts struggling and they're having bad quarters, and you're doing things like shutting down business units and, uh, um, cost cutting measures. They'll keep those programs alive to where even at accompanying wide meeting, when somebody, uh, suggests, Hey, maybe we should, uh, cut that particular program that's giving, uh, money to these philanthropic things. May maybe we should, uh, suspend that until we become more profitable. No, we're never getting rid of that program. Okay, excellent. So you could, you could
Speaker 4 00:37:17 Profitable, uh, but you can't, uh, possibly get rid of this program that makes you, uh, you know, uh, check that box that you're, you're doing your, uh, your civic duty anyways. I'm, you're doing this room. It's very, thank
Speaker 0 00:37:32 You. Thank you. A couple things, uh, the, uh, the idea that the corporation's matching funds for various philanthropies charities, you know, the argument would be that is not the purpose of the corporation. You know, suppose it's a bank, you know, the corporation they're ma they should be making loans and cash management services and maximizing profit. I, I think what's happened is the, they look at it as an employee benefit. And the employee employees will say, well, I wanna give to this cost and they'll say, good. We'll do matching funds. And then if one company does it and the other one doesn't, well, the other company does matching funds, are you gonna do matching funds? And, and so these business, aside from the moral corruption, it should be understood that business people, they're not the only ones, but they tend to be prone to pragmatism the philosophy that says there are no principles that you make it up as you go, uh, in Harvard, they have like the case study method.
Speaker 0 00:38:26 They they're very, they for decades. They've had this, you know, the idea one case after another, see if you can figure out what the pattern is, no less focus on principles and more on, um, try something, see if it works, if it doesn't work, try something else. So that all that kind of, uh, mentality doesn't help either. But, but a real source of this corruption is HR departments. Now, if you run a small business, uh, you just hire people, the, the owner will hire people or have some other people interview them. Once you get up into the thousands of employees, uh, there are, if you know, in the corporate world, I was at city Corp for many years, there's just huge managerial issues associated with HR, hiring people, promoting them. And they're just, when you think about it, they are, uh, outposts of government agencies, you know, that are the department of labor.
Speaker 0 00:39:19 You know, all the agencies, you know, purportedly, trying to prevent, uh, injustice and bigotry in hiring and things like that. So the HR departments become it. Isn't just the CEO suites, the HR, the home human resource departments become a source of real anti corporate stuff. And increasingly more recently training pro can you imagine the training <laugh> of existing employees, where they just hound these employees and put them through sensitivity training and anti-racial this, and anti-racial all that just a total widespread presumption of guilt, not presumption of innocence, not some employees acted badly, just assume all the employees are racist or sexist or homophobes or Islamophobia and run 'em through trainings, just the sheer, uh, injustice of that little on the waste of doing things other than your work. The other thing that you might be, be aware of, there's something called effective altruism, really a perverse thing.
Speaker 0 00:40:17 When you think about it, altruism itself is, uh, either a non to me or anti the idea that all the only thing that's moral is serving others. And more specifically, it can't be others. You value. It has to be others that have no value to you, or maybe even your enemies turn the other cheek effective altruism is a movement. If you just look it up, there's whole websites on this effective ultraism was the idea that, well, wait a minute, mother Charisa really isn't doing much because she's as poor as dirt. And when she goes out and helps people and washes their feet, she can only do so much. So the effect of altruist, they argue should go to wall street, make a fortune, and then give it to leftwing causes. And, and, and you should not go to wall street or, or make a fortune because you enjoy that work. No, you should be slavish about it. You're toiling away. You're maybe even burning out. Uh, but you spend that spend about a decade and a massive fortune, and then give it to BLM or give it to, uh, Antifa or give it to the democratic party or give it to some anti corporate group. And, and that that's called effective altruism where it's only effective. If you AMAs wealth and use your wealth to be anti wealth, that's the kind of stuff that's going on.
Speaker 1 00:41:31 All right. Clark, are you with us?
Speaker 6 00:41:36 Yes. Um, can you hear me okay? I can, yes. Great. Listen, uh, great presentation, uh, as usual Richard and, uh, yeah, I really, the only thing I wanted to maybe add is, uh, you know, I've never worked on wall street and of course you have, and I've always just assumed that the people on wall street who aren't familiar with Rand's ideas fall into, you know, one of three camps, uh, either they, you know, they feel like, Hey, you know, we wanna be like Gordon gecko or Michael milk. And I mean, even though we all know that milk and with his high yield bonds actually produced a, a highly practical and effective, uh, program, but most people, I, I assume, you know, in the business world, don't wanna be, uh, Gordon gecko, um, or, you know, the other, I guess second camp would be people who, you know, who are amoral, who feel like, uh, like you, you were explaining earlier, it's like, um, let's build our business.
Speaker 6 00:42:40 Let's become successful in the business world first. Then we'll figure out a way, how to somehow smuggle morality back into our life. You know, somehow morality to them of course, is exogenous to, to their, you know, nine to five or eight to five daily life. And then again, the, the third group of course, are, are the ones, you know, the woke, the woke people, the ones who, you know, who want stakeholder capitalism. And, you know, if those are the only three choices, of course, then maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that, that all this woke has arisen. I guess, most people who aren't objective, they, they wanna be moral. They wanna feel moral. They don't wanna go through life, you know, AOR. So, so, you know, when, when faced with those three choices, I mean, obviously they, they don't consider Rand, uh, Rand's ethics a as an alternative, then, then that's, that's what you're gonna get.
Speaker 6 00:43:40 And, and just, if I could piggyback this on, on what you had said earlier about this, uh, you know, Marx's, uh, economic determinism, uh, unfortunately, uh, as I'm sure you're aware, there's a lot of libertarians who were, who are not socialists, uh, but they seem to have the same view that, you know, it's all, uh, corruption and, you know, the people who've made it big, have all sold out, you know, to the state and, and you know, or, or to, or to this wom. And when in fact, I think pretty much everyone in this room believes that that most of these big people like, uh, bill gates, uh, Warren Buffett, the other names you mentioned earlier, they really do believe this woke stopped. They really do believe in E ESG and corporate social responsibility. So, so, you know, it's unfortunate, you know, that, that there's so many people who, who are, are really, I guess you could call 'em capitalists, but, but, you know, it's all, you know, follow the money, you know, key bono who benefits, it's not follow the ideas, which is what, what, what we hold. So, so I, I guess I'd like to hear your thoughts on, on, on this.
Speaker 0 00:44:51 Well, there's a phenomenon. Thank you for that. The wall street comment, uh, made me think, uh, this might interest you, that the phenomenon I have noticed is imagine going up the, uh, what's called the structure of production and you had a job or Newsome company or CEOs in sci kind, Maning mining and extraction industries, you know, like oil and gas development, then up from that manufacturing. And then up from that, say retailing. And then up from that advertising, finance business consulting, if you think about it for most people, they think of, well, the first one's kind of in the dirt, in the extractive, they're taking stuff out of the earth, but all the way up to finance and consulting very abstract, highly abstract. What really happens is they think the further you go up that chain, the more para you are, that is the Marxist theory.
Speaker 0 00:45:47 E even if it's a CEO, I'm not talking about just workers. I mean, CEOs in these sectors, you'll find that the, when they're in manufacturing, they're not as anti capitals when they're in retailing a little less so that they get up into advertising, finance consulting. It's interesting that the more abstract work, and they're not, it's not as if they're not productive at those jobs, it's that they come with, uh, because they're more intelligent actually. And because they went to elite schools, uh, they tend to be more, they tend to reflect more what the prevailing ideology is. So that's why you see, um, consulting firms, uh, you know, McKinsey and Booz Allen and others and finance. You see all the major bankers, very rare exceptions, where they would be pro capitalists. That's the reason, but it's a head scratcher to most people cuz they think the more abstract the work and the more money, money, money oriented it is, they must be pro capitalist.
Speaker 0 00:46:44 And it's actually the complete reverse. It's where it's, as you go down the chain of business sectors to ones that are more, uh, granular, so to speak and on the ground that they're, uh, less hostile to capitalism. Um, so I don't know. That's just a different take on things. I, I hope that helps my experience on wall street. I must say when I first went down there, I was becoming a capitalist and an objective in the late seventies. And I went to wall street in 81. And so I did not expect to find a bunch of pro capitalists, but even I was shocked at how many people in finance I met who were, uh, anti capitalist. They just were, they, they were promoting, uh, you know, they were anti Regan that whoever ran against re they were for Carter, they were for Mondale. They were for, I can't even remember all the goofballs that ran against, uh, and, uh, invariably, and, and I, if you ask them many times, they would just say they felt guilty.
Speaker 0 00:47:39 So precisely their success. They'd say someone would say, you know, I'm making a fortune in foreign exchange and I don't really think I'm productive, but it's, it's fascinating work. And it's, you know, taxes, my, uh, skills and stuff like that. But they literally thought them, they had been convinced that what they were doing, especially in finance was not a productive addition to the economy. I consider it actually the most product, one of the most productive sectors, but that's not what they're taught. They're taught in business school that they're just shuffling paper and they're just moving money around and they're not really adding value and yet they're better paid than most others. So the, so the gap between the two, what am I doing? And what am I making is huge. And it makes them feel and their talk, I feel very guilty about it is very much of a shame.
Speaker 0 00:48:26 Oh, by the way. Uh, and just an example, just an example of how Craven these companies are. I don't know if you guys noticed recently I'm reading it right off the screen here. Biden issues, a, uh, tweet my message to the companies, running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple. This is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price. You're charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product and do it. Now, this is, this is the Mo you know, Biden with his tweet, July 3rd. Now, what do you think the us oil and gas association did? Oh, they come back with a tweet. You think they would defend themselves and, and, and, and kiss off this Doar. Who's attacking them. No, they here's their tweet working on it. Mr. President, uh, in the meantime, have a happy fourth and please tell the white house intern who wrote your tweet to register for econ 1 0 1 in the fall.
Speaker 0 00:49:25 And what does that even mean? I mean, that is not a defen that is not a defense of your industry. And I know what they're gonna be taught in E guess what they're taught in econ 1 0 1. He thinks they think they're taught in econ 1 0 1 that the price system is determined by supply and demand. I wish that were true. That used to that used to be true, but econ 1 0 1 is just as likely to teach the students that prices are set arbitrarily that they're set by price Gors and profiteers and Putin, the three PS, I guess. So, uh, but again, such a CR the business people, even the associated they're, so, uh, apologetic and they're so craving and they're so guilt ridden, they can't even answer a very miscellaneous type, uh, dictate from the president. Very, very disturbing.
Speaker 1 00:50:13 Yeah. Richard, I saw that, that, uh, response kind of differently. I mean, I guess it could have been written more forcefully, but, uh, the whole, the whole tweet was in a kind of dry style. And by saying, working on it, I mean, that's what companies do, right? They, they wanna be competitive. They want to, uh, to, to sell more product. And so they're, they are actually, they don't need a politician to tell them to try to lower their prices be more efficient, um, that they're, they are working on it that because that's part of how they succeed and you beat the competition thoughts.
Speaker 0 00:51:03 No, I hear you.
Speaker 7 00:51:07 Thank you. Uh, great topic. Um, I just had a question just for clarification. It sounds like you're describing almost these two tracks where on one hand there are these, um, you know, anti capitalist intellectuals attacking these MBAs as these last bastion of pro capitalists that have to be wiped out. And then on the second track, it's like, those people don't even exist anymore. And they're really these, they are the anticapitalist that the intellectuals want them to be. And they're, you know, you know, they're going bending over backwards to prove that they're against profit or, you know, uh, maximizing it, or I'm just curious of your thoughts on that.
Speaker 0 00:51:52 Yeah. I, I hear what you're saying, Scott, on the, I guess it sounds contradictory, you know, it's like, well, well, are you threatened by these people, in which case they're true pro capitalists, or they've already been converted to anti capitalists that don't worry about it just a matter of time, you could say that the totalitarian mind, uh, which I think is going on here, the authoritarian totalitarian, anti capitalist mind, they don't wanna see even a scintilla of a remaining respect for the shareholder. So they do think of these business schools as citadels of capitalism in a way you're training these, uh, future bad guys. And, uh, so the pressure remains on, but, uh, no, I think you're right. I think you could say to the anti-capitalist, don't worry about it. They are generating, uh, uh, within these MBA programs, future CEOs who will certainly help move us in the direction of it.
Speaker 0 00:52:46 I, I, I, I, I, by the way, totally, uh, if you know the history of this endorse, uh, and sympathetic to the view of, I Rand that at some level business, people are not really fundamentally the ones responsible for the trend. I mean, they're not the ones that are in the idea business, and they should however, be aware of funding ideas that are pro capitalist or not. But, um, the, the real culprits here of course, are the philosophers and political scientists and others who are, and, and business ethics people, I guess I would most blame who are, who are pushing this idea. That self interest is evil and they should be others. But it's a good question, Scott.
Speaker 8 00:53:28 Hi, Jennifer,
Speaker 7 00:53:32 Do you have a question for Richard?
Speaker 0 00:53:37 Go ahead, Rashi, go ahead.
Speaker 8 00:53:40 Hi. How are you, man?
Speaker 0 00:53:42 Do you have a question?
Speaker 1 00:53:50 I guess not <laugh>
Speaker 7 00:53:51 Okay.
Speaker 0 00:53:52 So,
Speaker 1 00:53:53 All right, well, he's, we we'll, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt Rashid your, your new, I can tell from your icon. Um, and we'd love to have you back when you come up on stage, usually it's to ask a, a question of the speaker. So, um, join us next week and come up with a question. We'll invite you back up on stage. Um, Richard, we, we have just four more minutes and, uh, we have a hard stop, um, okay. This time, because, uh, I've had an interview in 30 minutes with, with Chris Stewart, but I, I wanted to, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 0 00:54:27 I, if you want, if you, you want, I could just finish off with a couple of minutes of something new. If we don't have questions, there, there is
Speaker 1 00:54:36 Not gonna have enough time to really get to I'll have put the so sorry to anyone who I'm up on stage. Cause we're, we're wrapping up.
Speaker 0 00:54:45 I, I just wanna quickly tout again, to try to be a little more positive here. There is a fairly decent, a somewhat mix, but decent book by, uh, Vive Ramaswami. It's a long name, but R a M a S w a M Y woke Inc. Woke Inc. Inside the corporate America's social justice scam that one's worth, uh, a look and he used to be in business and he thinks the whole thing is terrible. And so he's a, a rare voice and, and getting some traction and getting some coverage, but also he's interesting. And I wanted to mention him because he and others are joining with Peter the, who was known to the Atlas society to start funds and other groups to promote, uh, pushback here. So money is some, some money is going into movements to fight back at this, and that's very, uh, encouraging, uh, but it started with his book.
Speaker 0 00:55:43 And so if you just hook up Peter T O T H uh, I think it's E I L or I E L right, Jennifer, they are, uh, contribute and others. They're trying to contribute to a movement to defend the corporation and defend the profit motive and defend the shareholder model. So I just wanted to mention that my own view is that the shareholder model of corporate management and call it shareholder capitalism is a redundancy. That's what capitalism is. At least when it comes to the corporate world. That's the only model that should be defended, the profit maximizing shareholder model and the opposite stakeholder what's called stakeholder capitalism, I think is a contradiction in terms. So that's the Oxy Mo the oxymoron is stakeholder capitalism. That's the battle we're in now. And we're definitely in the minority, I think. Um, but that's how I would frame it.
Speaker 1 00:56:37 Yeah. Well, I mean, there is also the, the frequent mantra go woke, go broke. And so, um, there is reality at the end of the day. And, um, and if you are doing various policies, making priorities that, that aren't about, um, putting out the product that you raised money, you raised funds, you took that money from investors, um, back capital in order to provide them with a return on that investment. Yeah. Yeah. And instead you're kinda pursuing other, uh, <laugh> other, other priorities that aren't directly funneling to saying, Hey, you gave me that money. You invested in me on the, the basis of the fact that I was gonna earn money for you. Yep. So, um, people aren't gonna, uh, loan those kinds of businesses, money, and, and a lot of, uh, these priorities are just not popular with, um, with the general public and, and the, the customers and consumers that, uh, these, these companies should be catering to.
Speaker 1 00:57:41 So, all right. Well, thanks, Richard. This was definitely a provocative topic. Um, uh, folks I've, uh, put the link to, uh, where you can sign up to get updates from the Atlas society. So you won't miss any of these rooms. Uh, we have a couple of really great, um, clubhouse coming up next week. As I mentioned, if you wanna join me in 30 minutes, I'll be interviewing Chris Stewart. Um, he's an activist on, uh, school choice. Um, also has some very interesting, interesting libertarian perspective on, on race and, um, and education. Uh, and I wanna put a plug in for another interview I'm doing next week, that I am super excited about my favorite novelist, other than iron Rand. Uh, well, I'll say my favorite thriller, uh, writer is Jack Carr. He's the author of the terminal series terminal list series. Um, it's currently out as a, uh, a series on Amazon prime as well. They made it into, um, a series. So, uh, he happens to be a fan of iron ran. So I'm, I'm looking forward to talking to him about his craft, about his experience as a maybe seal sniper. And of course is, uh, the influence and inspiration that takes from, so see you guys, um, next week, maybe in, in a half an hour. Thanks Richard. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 0 00:59:07 Thanks Jennifer. Scott, David. Thank you all.
