Nearly everyone I know is worried about the state of our politics, our planet, and the markets. So what can companies do to help? Corporate social responsibility, environmental/social/governance investing, and “woke” capitalism (in which companies take, or purport to take, stands on social issues) have garnered lots of attention in recent years. But I’m increasingly struck by the fact that many businesses purporting to support society as a whole are actually degrading the political process itself.
Consider the massive lobbying effort under way by the computer and software industry to prevent the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar and congressman David Cicilline, from becoming law. The bill, which would stop internet platform companies self-preferencing their own products and services, could be put to a vote quite soon. It’s very likely to pass with bipartisan support. But Silicon Valley lobbying groups are now doing a helicopter dump of lobbying money on the Capitol to try and stop it.
Tech companies are coming up with all sorts of fallacies to try and prevent the regulation. They claim customers want things bundled (I’m not sure about that, given the massive shift from cable to individual streaming services); that the bill would preference Chinese competitors (an argument that’s both cynical and wrong — nobody loves China more than Big Tech — and it’s unlikely Chinese competitors will gain any further market share in the west anytime soon because of decoupling); and finally that it would jeopardise customer privacy. That last one really makes me chuckle; we all know how good Facebook and Google have been at protecting our privacy.
Anyway, the point here is that the industry is trying to pull an Uber, by dumping unprecedented sums of money in advance of a big vote to change the democratic process, just as the ride-sharing company did when it was battling various states over gig economy labour rights (its Croesan lobbying dollars prevented drivers from being recognised as proper employees in many states).
This kind of American oligopoly is, I believe, a much bigger worry for the democratic process than the Proud Boys storming Washington. There are so many egregious recent examples of companies that have literally bought their own justice — University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales, author of A Capitalism for the People and a big proponent of anti-monopoly efforts, recently tallied some of the galling examples in this article.
I was at a dinner recently where the topic of discussion was what corporations could do to support democracy. But as the discussion progressed, every possible solution ultimately led back to a policy agenda. Chief executives have agency, but at the end of the day, I don’t think companies will make any real change to their core agenda of making as much money as quickly as possible unless politicians, regulators or organised labour make them do it.
Indeed, I’m beginning to think that we should forget all the fancy do-gooder acronyms and simply force corporations to abide by the same oath that the medical profession does — do no harm. Pay your taxes, stop funding dark money lobbying, and just get out of the way. I have a feeling Washington would function vastly better if that happened. Ed, in the fantasy world I’ve just sketched, what piece of important legislation currently stymied by lobbying dollars would you wish to see passed?
Recommended reading
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My colleague Sarah O’Connor looks at why we are all working so hard, and what it’s doing to us.
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A fascinating investigative look by The New York Times into why cryptocurrency is neither as decentralised nor as anonymous as we have been led to believe (surprise, surprise!).
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It’s worth reading this Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Georgetown professor Ilya Shapiro, who was fired and then reinstated (but then quit) after a controversial tweet. He feels the university abandoned free speech principals in favour of hyper-progressive politics that seem to protect rights, but are actually undermining them in some cases. I find this Orwellian vibe on many campuses frightening. But I am also reminded, per The New York Times’ article on the topic, that sounding off on sensitive topics on Twitter is just a terrible idea, always.
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Finally, this piece in The New Yorker, by Dorothy Wickenden, about the wonderful literary Luddite Wendell Berry and his advice for today’s stressed out era, is just terrific.
Edward Luce responds
Rana, I have an answer to your question but let me first take issue with your comment that tech oligopoly is a “much bigger worry for the democratic process than Proud Boys storming Washington”. I fear that you are trivialising a past attempted coup and another one in the making. The worst that social media platforms could throw at our society is to help enable an end to US democracy. I have serious doubts whether subjecting tech platforms to stricter privacy controls and other regulations would have a dramatic impact on the malaise that is afflicting US democracy. In which case this bill, while certainly merited for other reasons (ie, promoting American innovation and protecting consumers), would be mostly irrelevant to the existential threat facing the US republic. The Proud Boys, The Oath Keepers, The Three Percenters and other far right groups did not spontaneously storm the Capitol. They were incited by the outgoing president to do so in order to annul his defeat. When it comes to election subversion in 2024 and beyond, it is not the fanatics I most worry about but apathy about the threat they pose.
The only threat more worrying than America’s democratic backsliding — by an order of magnitude everywhere — is global warming. So my fantasy bill would be to impose a steep carbon tax on all fossil fuel consumption with a full annual rebate to those in the bottom two-thirds of the income ladder. The bill would also impose an escalating border tariff on countries that are taking no action to lower their carbon output and provide Marshall Plan-scale assistance for developing countries to accelerate their transition to clean energy. When I think of our children and grandchildren, and indeed the rest of my life, nothing compares to global warming. But I find it hard to imagine that America could come anywhere close to fulfilling my fantasy of tackling climate change were it to have ended its 250 year experiment with liberal democracy. You are right, however, that getting money out of politics would help. I strongly agree with you on that.
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And now a word from our Swampians . . .
In response to ‘In awe of an indomitable woman — not the monarchy’:
“There are two kinds of selflessness. One is the willingness to compromise to another’s benefit, even though one wouldn’t have to. Being an accommodating neighbour, having children and staying and fighting when your country is under attack. Of course, these all carry potential rewards — they are trade-offs where benefiting others is part of the mix. When that part wins out, you could call the decision selfless, and, indeed, if many such decisions are taken it may be a boon to society.
Another kind of selflessness is when, instead of aiming to further one’s own interests, one strives to advance what one imagines to be another’s, or society’s, interests instead. This is a recipe for disaster. On the one hand, difficult as it may be, everyone is still best placed to judge their own interests, and not those of others.
As a consequence, spending 70 years in a gruesome job because one imagines that it’s good for society is a terrible idea and, indeed, probably a disservice to that society, which in the particular case at hand has therefore missed the opportunity of having a discussion about checks and balances at the highest levels of the state. — Daniel, Brussels
