Recent execution styled shooting death of the UnitedHealthcare CEO has restirred the conversation about the social responsibility of a business …
There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud (Friedman 1970).
The brazen murder of a CEO in Midtown Manhattan—and the cheering reaction to his execution—amounts to a blinking-and-blaring warning signal for a society that has become already too inured to bloodshed … (LaFrance 2024, Decivilization … Under Way)
Decivilizing Framed by Profit Only
The 1970 infamous claim of Libertarian Economist Milton Friedman reflecting a frame of reference in the Chicago School of Economics of that time --- a frame still quite dominant in mainstream economics and the business community to this day --- has led to all manner of difficulties, perhaps even violence. What has come to be called the Friedman Doctrine (or Friedman Declaration of Social Responsibility) is also infamous in that it framed what would become The Neoliberal Order 1970-2008, which was also embraced and encouraged in the Reagan Revolution in the 1980s. The resulting Neoliberalism led to all manner of political economic chaos and hostility represented in economic populism, and the notion that the system is somehow rigged against ordinary people, leading up to the 2016 election. It was a driver in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capital, with many in the middle-class still feeling left behind. It likely contributed to the extreme violence against the UnitedHealthcare CEO in 2024. The violence was framed by using words like delay, deny and depose as approaches of the Health Insurance industry, with monopoly money in the backpack, all related to an outrage over the concentration of wealth driven by excessive greed. So, what is going on?
No Social Responsibility Leads to Extreme Inequality and Concentration of Wealth
Laissez-faire capitalism (modern form in Neoliberalism) --- while from an ideological perspective, it is claimed as essential for driving rapid economic growth (which is a questionable claim, with a cargo-cult science supporting it; see Lynne in press) --- also works to concentrate wealth and the power it buys in the hands of a few. Neoliberalism is inherently prone to produce Extreme Inequality in wealth and power, which can also be characterized as the Plague of Inequality (after Williams 2023) represented in Extreme Concentration of wealth and the power it buys. Economic populism is predictable as the outcome of that plague, and hostility is common when a plague of extreme inequality is in play.
Extreme Inequality drove the recent concern that the US middle-class was being left behind, the claim really taking off after the 2008 crash and leading up to the 2016 Election. The middle-class had been experiencing stagnant wages, and were in effect being left behind, doing even more badly, relatively speaking, than the lower-income and poor. The system is structurally rigged, as it were, to help the poor and make the rich ever richer, with the middle-class in between not doing as well.
The political economic chaos represented in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 US Elections are all symptoms of the effects of --- and the general hostility always produced by --- Extreme Inequality and even more importantly the Extreme Concentration of Wealth and Power. A lot of people are angry, which became very apparent during the campaigns prior to all three of the 2016, 2020, and 2024 Election cycles. And, as is to be expected, some will act out, as in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capital, and, it likely helps explain the attack on the UnitedHealthcare CEO.
The frustration, anger, and hostility is to be expected. As Lafrance (2024) says in Decivilization …, the US has in effect moved to an extreme form of what was going on in the Gilded Age: “We already understand many of the conditions that make a society vulnerable to violence. And we know that those conditions are present today, just as they were in the Gilded Age: highly visible wealth disparity, declining trust in democratic institutions, a heightened sense of victimhood, intense partisan estrangement based on identity, rapid demographic change, flourishing conspiracy theories, violent and dehumanizing rhetoric against the ‘other,’ a sharply divided electorate, and a belief among those who flirt with violence that they can get away with it. These conditions run counter to spurts of civilizing, in which people’s worldviews generally become more neutral, more empirical, and less fearful or emotional.” The Lafrance point is that all of said conditions have resulted in US society moving into a state of decivilizing, which leads to the next even more fundamental point suggested by Dual Interest Theory (DIT) in Metaeconomics: What does it mean to decivilize?
Back to the Tragedy of the UnitedHealthcare CEO: Just what is going on?
When did simple kindness and empathy to people who are not like you become woke nonsense (The Other 98%, Facebook, December 13, 2024)
The quote about simple kindness and empathy points to the problem, now seeing any expression of empathy-with anyone other than the favored (meritorious, ostensibly deserving) few is in some sense nonsense. Problem is: It is decivilizing when one starts to see empathy-with the other, widely spread, as some kind of nonsense. Framing the role of empathy-with the other as nonsense is assured to not only stir economic populism, hostility, and even violence --- all in the realm of decivilizing --- but is also assured to cause economic inefficiency. Empathy-with the other is essential to economic efficiency and a stable political economic system. It is not nonsense.
It is Also Not New News
The need for empathy-with the other, going every direction, is not an especially new lesson to be learned, not a new concern. As Adam Smith (1758/1790) tried to teach the business community and the people who would become modern day economists, and seemingly few got the memo, the arrogance of self-interest had to be tempered by empathy-with the other, the latter giving rise to the moral sentiments. The ethic mattered. As Smith said it, everyone in business (and, economists, take note) needed to (in effect work at civilizing ) “…humble the arrogance of … self-love, and bring it down to something which (the) other … can go along with (Smith, 1759/1790, loc 1714-1727).” The arrogance of the self-love underlying the pursuit of self-interest only had to be tempered by the ethic, what the other could go along with. In order to achieve the true Wealth of a Nation (with wealth the focus of Smith 1777/1789), it was not sufficient to max Profit and the max U it could buy. The self-interest of max Profit and max U had to be tempered down to what the other could go along with as reflected in the moral sentiment --- the ethic --- shared with the other, which was the focus of Smith (1758/1790).
It is About Balancing Incentive & Ethic
In effect, Smith (1776/1789) was all about the key role of the Incentive. Smith (1758/1790) was all about the key role of the Ethic. But, the two forces had to be integrated: For Adam Smith, it was, as DIT makes clear, all about striking good balance in Incentive & Ethic, Ego & Empathy, Ego-based self-interest & Empathy-based woke (shared other-interest). Using the framing from McCloskey (2016) it was about striking good balance in the Profane (self-interest) and the Sacred (shared interest, the other-interest in DIT, the woke if one wishes to use that framing). The situation is illustrated in Figure 1.
Arrogance of self-interest only is served on the Profane path 0G, the path pointed to in the Friedman Doctrine about the social responsibility is only to max Profit (and the max U it can buy). It sees only the Econ not the Human. Perhaps the UnitedHealthcare CEO was even operating on the path defined by the vertical axis, which would be extremely Profane: Only further research into that case will tell. The Profane path 0G is also the point by the Reagan Revolution (as the Community: Government represented on the Sacred path 0M was disparaged), and what came to be The Neoliberal Order 1970-2008 (it crashed in 2008, just like it had crashed in 1929, but that is another story). Also notice that some greed is good, just as some woke is good, with both tempered onto path 0Z:
Adam Smith Saw the Civilizing Path
And, where is the path pointed to by Adam Smith? Well, the Sacred path 0M would be the backgrounding (what is found at the Station of the Impartial Spectator as Smith said it, or behind the Veil of Ignorance as John Rawls would later argue), the path which the other might prefer. Perhaps it is the path preferred by the angry and disgruntled, and, perhaps even the horizontal axis becomes the path for the violent. To avoid hostility and violence, attention must be put to finding the best path 0Z, one with good balance in the joint Profane & Sacred, Incentive & Ethic, Profit & Ethical Compensation. The matter of Optimal Inequality is also found on such a path of good balance in the Profound & Sacred, with civilizing the focus.
Notice the civilizing path 0Z always requires a bit of sacrifice --- altruism --- in both the domain of the Profane and the Sacred. A bit of the Profane profit has to be sacrificed, as in the CEO and the stockholders sacrificing a bit to pay higher compensation down the income ladder. A bit of payoff in the shared interest represented in the Sacred also has to be sacrificed, as in labor also not going to excess in requests for wage. So, it is about Not too much profit, and Not too much woke, but striking good balance in Profit & Woke. Maximizing is changed from max Profit and max U, or max the other payoff on path 0M, to max the jointly arising Profane & Sacred.
Decivilizing is About Moving Toward the Arrogance and Away from the Woke: The Specific Problem in the Health Care Industry
Decivilizing in general means moving away from sufficient empathy-with the other --- wokeness is nonsense --- as in ignoring the Sacred path 0M. Not empathizing with the stagnant wages of labor in the middle-class is to ignore the reasoned, Sacred path 0M --- again, lacking in mindful awareness, as in woke, of the middle-class situation. And, with respect specifically to the Health Care Industry, focusing too much on the max Profit of path 0G and not enough on the shared other-interest in good health outcomes --- the empathy-with path 0M --- well, anger and hostility can be expected.
As documented in Trzeciak and Mazzarelli (2019), the US Health Care system lacks substantively in empathy-with patients asking for consideration and help within the health care industry. As Trzeciak and Mazzarelli (2019, p. 25) say it: “Feeling empathy is a necessary precursor (or prerequisite) to motivate acts of compassion ….” So, being low on empathy-with reduces the amount of compassion at play in the Health Industry, a kind of decivilizing act, and, the death of a CEO associated with said industry is certainly in that category.
The starting point is mindful empathy-with the patient (and, it goes both ways, the patient in empathy-with the medical staff to include the doctor) followed by the potential for sympathy-with on the path to compassion-for. The title of the Trzeciak and Mazzarelli book is Compassionomics; The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference. The book provides deep empirical evidence that compassion is lacking in the Health Industry: Highly suggest you consider reading the book.
DIT in Metaeconomics (Lynne 2020) is a kind of Compassionomics, a Humanomics “…about the Human and their ethics left in (McCloskey and Carden 2020, p. 176).” The health insurance and care industry needs to apply Humanomics with a focus on said Human, not the self-interest, profit max Econ. As DIT clarifies, a better path 0Z trajectory would strike good balance in ego-based profit seeking & empathy-based tempering of excessive profit seeking. A path 0Z would reduce the hostility toward the health care system in general, including attention to reducing the possibility for extreme events as related to the UnitedHealthcare CEO. Trzeciak and Mazzarelli (2019) clarify the health system in the US operates too often on path 0G trajectories --- a path of maximum profit --- without enough attention to the path of empathy-with patients as preferred on path 0M. An industry on path 0Z would be far less likely to stir hostility enough to drive extreme events like the recent one involving the CEO of a health insurance company.
So, What Do Next?
It is seemingly time for US Business in general, and the mainstream economists who support same --- and, given recent events, the Health Industry in particular --- to reconsider the Friedman Doctrine. It is short on empathy and long on the ego-based arrogance of self-interest. It is short on The Ethic and long on The Incentive. It is short on the Ethic and long on Excessive Greed. It is also time to reconsider the ideological frame represented in Neoliberalism, which also does not acknowledge the key role of the empathy-based ethic essential to economic efficiency. Excessive greed must be tempered with the ethic in order to achieve efficiency. It is time to consider rebalancing the Profane single-minded pursuit of profit with the Sacred shared interest in good and reasoned outcomes for everyone. It is what a civilizing order is all about, and Metaeconomics can help find it.
References
Friedman, Milton. “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” The New York Magazine, September 13, 1970.
LaFrance, Adrienne. “Decivilization May Already Be Under Way.” The Atlantic, December 11, 2024.
Lynne, Gary D. Metaeconomics: Tempering Excessive Greed. Palgrave Advances in Behavioral Economics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Lynne, Gary D. “Cargo-Cult Economics to Metaeconomics: Toward a Humanomics with a Theory.” Review of Behavioral Economics (in press).
McCloskey, Deidre Nansen. Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
McCloskey, Deidre Nansen and Art Carden. 2020. Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776/1789 (digital access at www.feedbooks.com).
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 1759/1790 (digital access at digireads.com).
Trzeciak, Stephen and Anthony Mazzarelli. Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference. Pensacola, FL: Studer Group, LLC, 2019.
Williams, David Lay. The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx. 2024. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition, 2024.
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