How Much More of this “Corporations are People, Too” Bullshit Do We Have To Endure?

This is a long post because it includes a rant and then a solution. If you just want the rant, read the first part.

Part I. American Airlines, Super Person

Color me angry. Color me I’d-Pull-Out-My-Hair-But-I-Can’t-Afford-a-Wig angry.

American Airlines wants the U.S. taxpayers to take over its pension obligations. AA claims that its bankruptcy filing allows it to walk away from $9 billion in pension payments that will then have to be paid by you and me, the U.S. taxpayer, since the federally controlled Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is already $23 billion in debt. American is not asking for help because it can’t pay those pensions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/business/pension-agency-pressures-american-airlines.html

$4 billion in cash is far from broke. So, why should AA be allowed to dump its debt on the U.S. taxpayers? Anyone? If you said “To save the jobs of AA’s workers,” go to the back of the class. American also intends to slash jobs.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/business/american-airlines-seeks-job-cuts.html?src=twr

It gets worse. American will not simply trim its workforce. It plans to outsource skilled, higher paying jobs to other countries.


http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/02/04/3711880/american-airlines-may-outsource.html

In other words, the U.S. taxpayer is being asked to bail out American Airlines in order to save the life of the company, not the livelihoods of its workers. We are being told that American Airlines, the corporation/person has needs, too. It deserves to live. It can not be cast out into the streets with all the homeless, unemployed, uninsured Americans to die. AA deserves gold plated health insurance from the federal government. Think of it as Super-Social Security and Medicare-Elite.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram, newspaper for the DFW area and propaganda machine for AA wants us to feel the corporate/person’s pain. Mitchell Shnurman, Star-Telegram columnist attempts to tug at our heartstrings with rhetoric like:




http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/02/04/3710856/americans-proposals-are-in-line.html

Another pop quiz. What is the heart and soul of a company?

If you said “The men and women who make up its workforce”, join the other dunces at the back of the class. Yes, I know it is getting crowded back there. But you are not being a “team” player. Workers are just an unnecessary cost of doing business. The “company” is the stock price, the CEO salaries, the corporate jets. The “company” is a feudal fife, endowed by the Supreme Court with personhood. No, make that super personhood. It is enough if the nation’s disabled and elderly dine on cat food and skimp on their generic medications. America’s corporations must feed on caviar and get daily Botox injections---at the tax payer’s expense.

The Star Telegram has raised its hand. It wants to respond. Sure. Let’s hear it.

In a huge feature on the editorial page called “American’s plan offers ‘renewal and growth’” we (as in “we” the AA employees who can make or break the airline’s bankruptcy plans) are told:



http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/02/04/3711784/american-airlines-offers-remaining.html

Well put, American Airlines. You are not laying off 13,000 workers and demanding a $9 billion bailout. You are surgically removing a cancerous tumor made up of 13,000 overpaid, dead beat workers who are sucking out your life force, and you are asking for $9 billion in chemotherapy to keep that pesky old tumor from coming back. Every American (Airlines) is entitled to health care. Every American (corporation) is entitled to hope.


Now, can I ask a question. Hope for what? Hope for $9 billion more in federal debt? Hope for overseas employees who will get new aircraft maintenance contracts. Hope for American’s CEOs, who will be rewarded with huge bonuses in a couple of years---while 13,000 laid off workers are still pounding the pavement, trying to find jobs? Hope for the retirees who will see their pensions cut if the feds take over?

OK, I’ve had my rant. Now, the promised solution. No, it isn’t something as easy as “line them up against the wall” or “outsource all the jobs to southeast Asia”. In order to figure out a way to fix American business, we first need to diagnose the disorder. What is the problem with U.S. business? Not a lack of money. The wealthiest Americans are rolling in money. Not a lack of skilled workers. Americans are hard workers. Taxes? Don’t make me laugh. Taxes on the rich and corporations are modest in this country. Obama? Get serious here.


Part II. American Business is Not Just Sick. It Is Suicidal


When we see a person or a group of people who are fixed upon committing suicide, we step in. For the individual that means medical care to help with depression and social services to ease hunger and despair. It also means denying that person the means to kill himself. So, for instance, an acutely suicidal person gets locked up for a few days, until he no longer wants to commit suicide.

The groups of individuals known in America as “corporations” are also suicidal. They are not in their right mind. They are like a depressed person who drinks too much, smokes too much, has unprotected sex and who will eventually put a gun in his mouth and shoot a bullet through the back of his head, without ever realizing that all the pain he has endured has been self inflicted. American corporations are paranoid. They blame the workers. They blame the federal government. They blame acts of God. They study the entrails of animals (also known as the Wall Street Journal) for signs that will tell them what the future holds, without suspecting that they are living the future that they themselves have created. Lacking self awareness, they are unable to see the world around them.

If you have not read Zen and Creative Management by Albert Low, please do. If you are not already familiar with Zen, please read one of Alan Watts’ books on the subject, first, in order to acquaint yourself with the terms that Low uses in his book.

Low challenges the reader to



This remark will strike some as blasphemous. In the U.S., we were trained by our puritan forebears to believe that profit is the mark of God’s blessing upon a person or an endeavor. On the other hand, a poor person (or a business that fails) is deserving of our scorn, since loss of profit is a sign of God’s disfavor. If you want to know why we believe something so silly, read Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Or, if you are pressed for time, I have a couple of old journals in which I summarize parts of the book.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/625

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2238173

Think that puritan ideals are dead? I witnessed them a few years ago, when Enron failed, and Americans suddenly realized that corporations were capable of “going bad”. Halliburton was attacked for some of its own crimes. A Republican Congressman got on CNN and angrily defended the company by telling the host (in effect) “But Halliburton is still solvent!” In other words, any company turning a profit is “good”, no matter what laws or man or God are broken to make that profit.

Back to Albert Low. Turn to page 44 of the book. See the diagram that places “employee”, “shareholder” and “market” at the three points of an equilateral triangle? This triangle is the super-person known as a company. Note that “employee” is just as important as “shareholder” and “market”. Traditionally, Americans have viewed the world as a dualism. In matters of business, the interests of the shareholders are opposed to those of the worker. This leads to the Ebenezer Scrooge model of good business, in which more poor houses mean more desperate employees mean lower wages and longer hours means more profit for me yippee! Except who the fuck will buy my product now that no one (besides me) has any money? (My apologies to the purveyors of the patent medicine/quack remedy known as “supply side.”)

Low adds another dimension to his non-dualistic corporate model by superimposing another triangle labeled “idea”, “demand” and “form.” Together, the two figures create six pointed star, with points labeled “demand”, “shareholder”, “form”, “employee”, “idea”, “market” as you go around the face of the clock from 1 to 11.



A company which understands itself recognizes that the employee is just as essential as the profits or the product or the market. A company that has been ensnared by mara---the demon that tempts us to desire so that we will then grow fearful of losing what we desire---will focus on one part of the whole---usually the profit---and declare that all else is superfluous. No, worse than superfluous. Anything besides the profit is dangerous, because it might take away our profit. And so, the bosses antagonize employees, cutting wages, breaking promises, driving away all of them that can get a job elsewhere and ending up with those who are consumed by their own form of mara---“I hate this company, but I can’t afford to quit.”

Because I am a physician, I like medical analogies. Here is another one. Under the traditional, dualistic American business model, the shareholders and CEO are the “head”. The other employees are the arms and legs. One day the head looked down and said to itself “Too much blood, oxygen and food get wasted providing nutrition to those arms and legs. What if there isn’t enough for me? I could die! Oh my! Let’s get rid of those limbs quick!” So, the head cuts off its arms and legs---and too late, realizes that it has no way to get food or water, and so it starves to death.



Because a picture is worth a thousand words, compare this business model:



To this:



Which do you think is a model for lasting business success?

What does this all mean for American Airlines? If the company outsources vital aircraft maintenance work to other countries where the FAA can not set standards or supervise, it may jeopardize safety. This will have an adverse affect on the market, the employees and the profit, as people begin to 1) avoid the airline and 2) stop giving it tax breaks and other perks because it is no longer the employer of so many happy taxpayers. In order to see this complicated math, the execs at AA have to get beyond the extremely short sighted equation that says "Profit+ (Less expense)=more profit (for me!)" The public has to move beyond the old puritan notion that "proft" equals "godliness." And we have to let go of the notion that corporations are the same as people (in this country, citizens) with their right to life, liberty, happiness, and unlimited political speech.

Corporations do not have souls and God does not grant or deny them admission to Heaven, no matter how devout their CEOs claim to be, because Corporations are not human beings. (!!!!)They are not "alive". They are a "structure or process" to quote Low and as such, they do not live, they function. And I don't care how big their corporate headquarters or how shiny their corporate jets or how rich their CEOs, a company that does not function correctly is broken and needs to be fixed.

Note that American is just one of many companies now declaring that its right to "live" trumps the rights of the rest of us to live. Safety is being tossed out the window. Corporate super-people now demand the right to pollute the skies and water, poison their customers, sell dangerous medications and medical therapies all in the name of "survival" and "profit." The Koch Brothers lobby against mass transit, because decreased demand for petrochemical fuels will "endanger" their oil price speculation racket, the source of the wealth which is supposed to make them the most beloved of God---

While God or Buddha or the Great Mother or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Our Collective Conscience may love the Koch Brothers individually, He, She, Other or It does not love Koch Industries or American Airlines. The deity will shed no tears if a flawed business model goes under, but It will notice and care if another person dies or goes homeless and hungry because of corporate greed.

Addendum: One more thought about American Airlines, have its CEOs considered the possibility that it has been able to delay the pension slashing/job cutting/safety trimming activities of its competitors for so long and that it approaches bankruptcy flush with cash precisely because it has (up until now) taken such good care of its employees?