Here is the section on Le Roi from my new book: Modern Class Struggles
in the Information Age
Le Roi est le Roi
Markets teach us to turn a blind eye toward the environmental
damage occurring all around us. This defect reflects a far
larger problem with markets in our economy.
Today, pseudo-information takes precedence over real
information. As a result, unmet social needs press in on us from
all sides. Business has no reason to meet these needs in unless
they can turn a sufficient profit. Political leaders tell us
that we cannot even afford our present level of government
spending on social or environmental programs, let alone commit
enough funds to address these challenges adequately. So we watch
our cities, as well as the global environment deteriorate. While
the situation worsens daily, nobody steps forward to take
responsibility for this mess.
In earlier times, a king, or as the French would say, le roi,
ruled supreme. He could set priorities and spend money in any
way that he saw fit, no matter how arbitrary. Today, we have a
new roi, or we should say, ROI, which commands our life. This
new ROI is an acronym for the Return on Investment. This ROI,
and this ROI alone, now determines what will or will not be done.
As Kevin Phillips has summarized this rule of ROI:
##Finance has not simply been spreading into every nook and
cranny of economic life: a sizeable portion of the financial
sector, electronically liberated from past constraints, has put
aside old concerns with funding the nation's long-range
industrial future, has divorced itself from the precarious
prospects of Americans who toil in factories, fields, or even
suburban shopping malls, and is simply feeding wherever it can.
[Phillips 1994, p. 81]
The wild expansion of the domain this new ROI is far from
accidental. Powerful interest groups, financed largely by great
corporations or those who already have great wealth, have been
hard at work reducing the public sphere of activity. This attack
on the public sphere has taken several forms. Conservative think
tanks dominate the media, spreading the promise of privatization.
Sympathetic politicians underfund public activities, undermining
the ability of the public sector to provide adequate services,
thereby creating an impression of inefficiency. Finally, in the
absence of public financing of elections, corporations more and
more frequently can openly finance the election of those who
favor their interest.
Schools, prisons, roads sanitation, and just about any other
sphere of public activity are on the road to becoming privatized.
Public lands are turned over to private interests who see
national treasures merely as sources of timber or minerals or a
place to graze cattle. Public information is turned over to
corporations, who then sell it to the same citizens whose taxes
originally paid for developing the data. Someone once posted a
message on the Internet that is too poignant let pass just
because I cannot remember the source:
##The United States has become a place where your neighborhood
video store is still open at midnight, while the library is
closed at noon; where an advertising agency owns more computers
and fax machines than it knows what to do with, while teachers
have to wait in line to use a school's one functioning copying
machine. [unknown source]
The public sphere is subject to the will of the people, albeit
only partially and to an diminishing extent. If we do not
appreciate our schools or our city council, we have the
possibility of voting to replace them. We can still even have
some modest influence on the state or federal government.
Corporations, in contrast, are responsible only to their
shareholders. Yes, they are subject to the laws of the nation,
but more and more corporations can rewrite the laws, often
through the agency of compliant politicians, who often allow the
corporations themselves to draft the laws that affect them.
The shareholders, to whom the corporations owe their allegiance,
single mindedly seek out the highest ROI. Sometimes a firm can
improve its ROI through a new technology or an organizational
innovation. More typically these days, corporations seek to
inflate their ROI by cutting back. They cut back on wages,
pensions, or medical care for their workers. They cut back on
measures that will preserve the environment. With the help of
the politicians whom they hold in tow, they cut back in taxes.
The ROI flourishes while society decays. Our willingness to
cede more and more authority to the corporations is tantamount to
demanding, "Off with our heads."
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
