I watched all the victory speeches last night after the Iowa caucuses were done. Everybody had their own spin on why it was a good night for them, of course, and I’m not going to say much about that. We all know who did well and who didn’t. But one thing stood clear in all the speeches offered to the people of America as a branding statement for this new generation of political products: Everybody hates big bad corporations.
It was weird for me. It wasn’t that long ago that I would listen to people lathering up about big bad corporations and how they needed to be taken down a peg and go Huzzah like the rest of the gang. After 25 years in business, however, I find a different reaction bubbling up in my gut when I hear the rhetoric.
I feel bad for the big bad corporations.
This does not include some big bad corporations, of course. In particular, I have a lifelong jones against any insurance company that has ever covered me for any reason. I believe they are very good at giving compelling reasons of two kinds: 1) Reasons you should spend a lot of money protecting yourself from whatever and 2) Reasons why you can’t be paid any money if whatever happens to you.
This is particularly true of those handling my health coverage, who have historically been absolutely brilliant at requesting more data, informing me of claims that are being processed, misplacing those claims, requiring additional backup, and then telling me why they can’t reimburse me for anything except postage.
I also have a problem with companies that make land mines, or fund huge Green campaigns while turning the icecaps to mush, or fire all their American workers and move to Burkina Faso, but that may just be me. All big bad corporations aren’t on my list of favorite people is what I’m saying.
But then there was all that political speechmaking last night, and everybody on both sides of the aisle just seemed to hate business in general and all those big bad corporations in particular. And part of me wants to say, Yeah! And yet… hm…
I work for a big bad corporation. Most of my friends do too. We’re writers and lawyers and accountants and research people and editors and graphic artists and programmers and marketing and advertising folks and a lot of other things that are neither big nor bad. We do what we do. And if anything happened to our big bad corporations, we’d be SOL.
Isn’t it big bad corporations that employ people? A lot of people? And, except in some very big and bad ones, help to provide that same inadequate health insurance without which all of us would be one bad heartbeat away from total disaster? And even some stinky form of pension, too?
Isn’t it the big bad corporations that can afford to fund research and development, and give us all the cool things that we want to buy? The iPods and laptops and stuff that’s carried on them, the cars and clothes we wear, and to some extent even the food we eat and the liquor we shouldn’t drink?
When we get to a certain point in life, and want to make more than $23,000 a year, and want to build a family or buy a fast vehicle or a house… who but a big bad corporation can pay us enough to think about such things?
Who builds the buildings we work in and the planes we fly on and the office furniture we sit on and financial instruments that make a lot of all that possible? Who would do all that if the big bad corporations were gone?
I’ll tell you one thing. Your average big bad corporation is not as powerful as you think. Its leaders sit around trying to figure out how they might squeeze another point of margin out of their business, with the cost of labor and materials and energy being so high. They worry about how to grow a little every year, which is what their investors and the Wall Street bears are constantly up their butts about. And every one of them, every single one, is made up of many little offices, many smaller enterprises, and in those many humble spaces large and small are people who rely on the big bad corporation to do well and stay healthy.
A big bad corporation is not a monolith. And in any one there are only a couple of fat guys in gray suits. The rest of it is guys like you and me.
Yes, they are big. Yes, many of them are very, very bad. They cut our pensions and they squash our spirits and they pour crud into the air and they lie like rugs when they have to. But the sight of all these politicians piling on our big bad corporations kind of made me wince. I mean… is that kind of like the pot calling the kettle beige?
Aren’t these guys vying for control of the biggest and baddest corporation of them all?