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Why Do So Many People Hate Corporations and Wealth?

By Pat Pending (9/3/01)

This Labor Day, let's consider the causes and the effects of the animosity between labor and management and between people and corporations. If a politician wants to drum up popular support, all he has to do is to blame all our problems on the evil corporations. Why do people of so many political stripes have almost a knee-jerk hatred of corporations? And are the policies resulting from that hatred beneficial or harmful to regular old working folks?

No doubt we have all been mistreated by a corporation somewhere along the way, whether it was an employer who didn’t treat us fairly or a vendor who sold us a shoddy product, but we have also been mistreated by plenty of others as well, from family members to neighbors to coworkers. At the same time, we have obtained many of the comforts in our lives from corporations, including our homes, our cars, our medicines, most of our foods, and usually also our jobs. So why is it so easy to drum up hatred and anger against corporations and wealthy people rather than against brothers, neighbors, and co-workers?

There are probably four reasons:

1. Corporations are faceless, non-human entities. It is much easier to make unfair attacks on a faceless entity than on a real person who bleeds from the attacks. Of course, people associated with corporations, from shareholders to employees to customers, also bleed when the corporation is unfairly attacked, but it is an anonymous kind of bleeding that doesn’t bother anyone’s conscience.

2. Corporations represent profits, property, and capitalism, which many people, suffering from the influence of socialists, believe are evil.

3. Corporations are often large, and many people have a mistrust of anything that is large.

4. The green-eyed monster of jealousy. Many of us resent the fact that other people have more money than we have, that others have been more successful in their careers than we have, and so forth. Instead of appreciating and enjoying our own successes, we tend to look at another's success and count it as our own failure. That is foolish and self-destructive, since other people's success usually does not harm us but rather has a beneficial ripple effect.

It is interesting that some of the very people who would recognize the evil inherent in the government’s taking away a private individual’s property or his right to trade or do business are the same people who call for the government to perform just those kinds of takings from corporations. But, in reality, corporations are nothing more than groups of people combining their assets for a common purpose. So, if the government restricts or plunders the corporation, it is in fact restricting and plundering the individuals associated with the corporation. There really is nobody else here but us people, whether we call ourselves by different names or try to group ourselves into various ethnic or interest groups.

No doubt many corporations and powerful people plunder the regular folks, but they can't do it without government help. For example, McDonald's benefits from U.S. government subsidies of foreign advertising for U.S. businesses, sugar producers benefit from government protectionism against competition, professional sports owners receive corporate welfare to build new stadiums, and so forth. All of these actions are unadulterated plunder, no matter how you dress them up. They harm the people and should be stopped. While we ought to try to shame corporations into avoiding such schemes, our real outrage should be aimed at the elected officials who engage in this corporate welfare. We cannot remedy the wrongs done to us by turning around and committing additional wrongs against corporations. If we do, we are only punishing ourselves twice.

The old labor vs. management or individual vs. large corporation myths need to die, because they engender policies that harm both corporations and workers. Yes, there are evil, nasty, greedy people in all walks of life, but they can only do great harm with the help of government. When government policies limit the freedom of companies to operate as they think best, they simply limit the companies' ability to serve customers and to compete for employees. The truth is, when companies succeed and are profitable, they benefit their workers, their management, and their customers. If a company consistently mistreats its workers or its customers, it will have a very hard time staying in business, because both workers and customers have choices. The real problems arise not from competition and striving for profits but rather from political plunder. When government inserts itself into the equation by protecting companies from competition or by plundering taxpayers to engage in corporate welfare, then we working folks and taxpayers are harmed.

Perhaps this labor day, we will recognize that the real battle should be working people and their property rights vs. the plundering government. Winning that battle would have tremendous positive results for us all.