Greed, Inc.

Description

Why is television so awful? Why do drug companies hide unfavourable test results? Why do automakers market unsafe cars? Why is our environment poisoning us? Why is our food so unhealthy? Why are we working sixty-hour weeks? Greed, Inc. places the blame for much of what ails contemporary society at the doorstep of a single institution – the modern publicly traded business corporation. We have become an uncaring society because the corporate ethos that informs virtually everything in our culture is uniquely and implacably selfish. The corporation exists for one purpose only: to make a profit. And such an objective trumps all others. Nothing else matters. This book traces the rise of the corporation from the Rationalist social engineering of the 18th century — as well as the parallel triumph of moral relativism, consumerism, enterprise culture, and other dominant value systems of our time. It shows how a series of psychological and philosophical misconceptions institutionalized greed and self-serving behaviour as a good thing for society. Indeed the origins of corporate culture seem in retrospect so preposterous as to defy belief — and yet these misconceived values now dominate our lives. Because of these notions of selfishness, we have arrived at a time when we seem at odds with almost everything around us.

Greed, Inc. is a groundbreaking book in that it reveals the roots of this social discontent for the first time through the lens of moral philosophy. Anybody who cares about our quality of life and the very survival of humanity will need to read this book.