East Oregonian
A4
Saturday, January 12, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OTHER VIEWS
The remoralization of the market
S
uddenly economic
populism is all the
rage. In his now
famous monologue on
Fox News, Tucker Carl-
son argued that Ameri-
can elites are using ruth-
less market forces to
enrich themselves and
D aviD
B rooks
immiserate everyone
COMMENT
else. On the campaign
trail, Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren are
telling left-wing versions of the same story.
In an era of tribal emotionalism, you’re
always going to be able to make a splash
reducing a complex problem to a simple
narrative that separates the world into the
virtuous us, and the evil them (the bank-
ers). But I’d tell a third story about our cur-
rent plight, which is neither economic pop-
ulism nor free-market fundamentalism.
My story begins in the 1970s. The econ-
omy was sick. Corporations were bloated.
Unions got greedy. Tax rates were too high
and regulations were too tight. We needed
to restore economic dynamism.
So in 1978, Jimmy Carter signed a tax
bill that reduced individual and corpo-
rate tax rates. Sen. Ted Kennedy led the
effort to deregulate the airline and trucking
industries. When he came into office, Ron-
ald Reagan took it up another notch.
It basically worked. We’ve had four
long economic booms since then. But there
was an interesting cultural shift that hap-
pened along the way. In a healthy society,
people try to balance a whole bunch of dif-
ferent priorities: economic, social, moral,
familial. Somehow over the past 40 years
economic priorities took the top spot and
obliterated everything else. As a matter of
policy, we privileged economics and then
eventually no longer could even see that
there could be other priorities.
For example, there’s been a striking
shift in how corporations see themselves.
In normal times, corporations serve a lot
AP Photo/Andy Wong, File/
A man leaves an Apple store in Beijing on Jan. 3, 2019.
of stakeholders — customers, employees,
the towns in which they are located. But
these days corporations see themselves as
serving one purpose and one stakeholder
— maximizing shareholder value. Activ-
ist investors demand that every company
ruthlessly cut the cost of its employees and
ruthlessly screw its hometown if it will
raise the short-term stock price.
We turned off the moral lens. You prob-
ably know the example of the Israeli day
care centers. Parents kept showing up late
to pick up their kids. To address the prob-
lem, the centers experimented with fin-
ing the late parents. But the number of late
pickups doubled. Before, coming to pick
up your kid on time was a moral obligation
— to be fair to the day care workers. After,
it was seen as an economic transaction.
Parents were happy to pay to be late. We
more or less did this as an entire society —
we switched to a purely economic lens.
A deadly combination of right-wing
free-market fundamentalism and left-wing
moral relativism led to a withering away
of moral norms and shared codes of decent
conduct. We ripped the market out of its
moral and social context and let it operate
purely by its own rules. We made the mar-
ket its own priest and confessor.
Society came to be seen as an atomized
collection of individual economic units
pursuing self-interest. Selfishness was nor-
malized. As Steven Pearlstein puts it in his
outstanding book “Can American Capi-
talism Survive?”, “Old-fashioned norms
around loyalty, cooperation, honesty,
equality, fairness and compassion no lon-
ger seem to apply in the economic sphere.”
Anything you could legally do to make
money was deemed OK. A billion-dol-
lar salary for a hedge fund manager? Per-
fectly acceptable. The Apple corporation
exists because of American institutions.
But, as Pearlstein notes, Apple parked its
intellectual property in an Irish subsidi-
ary so it could avoid paying taxes in Amer-
ica and support those institutions. It saved
$9 billion in 2012 alone. This is clearly
sleazy behavior. Apple employees should
be humiliated and ashamed.
But today the amoralism of the trad-
ing floor governs corporate decision-mak-
ing. Pearlstein quotes Carl Icahn: “I don’t
believe in the word ‘fair.’” So Apple paid
no reputational price when it stiffed its own
country.
Social trust arises from a covenant: I
give to my company, my town and my gov-
ernment, and they give back to me. But that
covenant was ripped. Now the general per-
ception is: When I give, they take. As we
disembedded individuals from traditional
moral norms we disembedded companies
from social ones. Human beings are moral
animals, and suddenly American moral ani-
mals found themselves in an amoral eco-
nomic system, which felt increasingly
alienating and gross.
We wound up with the secession of the
successful, and in many parts of the coun-
try we wound up decimating the social
trust that is actually a prerequisite for eco-
nomic prosperity.
Capitalism is a wonderful system. The
populists are perpetually living in 2008,
when the financial crisis vindicated all their
prejudices. They ignore everything since
— the 19 million jobs that have been cre-
ated, the way wages are now rising at 3.2
percent.
But capitalism needs to be embedded in
moral norms, and it needs to serve a larger
social good. Remoralizing and resocializ-
ing the market is the great project of the
moment. The crucial question is not: How
can we have a good economy? It’s: How
can we have a good society? How can we
have a society in which it’s easier to be a
good person?
David Brooks is a columnist for the
New York Times.
OTHER VIEWS
Supreme Court will hear
gerrymandering case
Anthony Kennedy argued in 2004. Democ-
racy requires people to join together to
advance their political beliefs. So when a
When North Carolina’s Republican leg- state makes that nearly impossible, “First
islative leaders have seen their work struck Amendment concerns arise.”
down in court as unconstitutional — as
Long ago Senate president pro tem Phil
they have many times — they have fre-
Berger, a Republican, co-sponsored five
quently responded by attacking the judge or bills over eight years to create independent
judges as partisan hacks.
redistricting commissions. Now that his
That approach won’t work if the con-
party is in the majority, he sees no need for
servative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court sur-
change.
prises the nation by throwing
Unfortunately, it’s hard
out the congressional dis-
to be optimistic about the
The court,
trict map that N.C. legisla-
Supreme Court’s view of the
tors explicitly drew to elect as
which will hear N.C. case (which is called
many Republicans as possible.
Rucho vs. Common Cause).
arguments in
The court on Friday, Jan.
The conservative justices are
4, agreed to hear a challenge
not inclined to think the courts
March and
to the North Carolina map,
should meddle in states’ polit-
likely rule by
ical affairs. When the moder-
as well as one to a Maryland
June, will decide ate Kennedy was on the court,
congressional district. That
was big news, because while
only if partisan there was a chance he could
with the court’s four lib-
the court has addressed racial
gerrymandering is side
erals. His replacement, Brett
gerrymandering, it has never
unconstitutional. Kavanaugh, has not ruled on
ruled on whether partisan ger-
rymandering can be unconsti-
partisan gerrymandering cases
tutional. In taking these cases,
before, but there’s little reason
the court could for the first
to think he would break with
time establish whether crafting districts to
his fellow conservatives in this case. Given
help one party over the other is permissible. his clear partisan leanings revealed in his
Despite the odds, we and most N.C. vot- confirmation hearings, it’s almost certain he
ers hope the court does away with the prac- won’t.
tice or severely limits it. North Carolina’s
The court, which will hear arguments in
leaders acknowledge that they drew the
March and likely rule by June, will decide
lines to ensure that 10 Republicans were
only if partisan gerrymandering is uncon-
elected to the state’s 13 congressional seats. stitutional. It will not rule on whether it’s
Rep. David Lewis said they did so “because a wise practice that benefits this country.
Clearly it’s not and it doesn’t. North Caro-
I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map
lina should follow the lead of several other
with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”
Such an approach is the height of hubris states that have created independent com-
missions, with legislative input, to draw
and an insult to voters, whichever party is
maps.
in charge. It essentially robs millions of
Only then will political seats be won the
voters of their voice, since the outcome is
old-fashioned way: By convincing voters
preordained. In a more narrow legal sense,
you are the best candidate, on a level play-
it also could violate the First Amendment
ing field.
right to association, as now-retired Justice
By The Charlotte (North Carolina)
Observer
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of
the East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
Is Amazon the next Standard Oil?
The (British) Telegraph
W
ithin the space of 25 years, a
company that began life sell-
ing niche second-hand books
from a garage in Seattle has become the
world’s most valuable business. Ama-
zon was worth $797 billion when the U.S.
stock market closed on Monday, surpass-
ing Microsoft for the first time.
Jeff Bezos, the founder, started off
with the sale of a book entitled “Fluid
Concepts and Creative Analogies: Com-
puter Models of the Fundamental Mech-
anisms of Thought,” by Douglas Hof-
stadter. Today, his company dominates
the online retail delivery market and has
expanded into TV, online film and music
distribution and cloud computing. It
has made Mr Bezos the richest man on
earth, owner of the Washington Post and
a power in the land; and as is inevita-
ble when someone reaches such heights
the question arises: has he become too
powerful?
In the past 25 years huge corporations
— Apple, Google and Facebook — have
sprung almost out of nothing. But Ama-
zon’s reach seems greater than any. There
are echoes from history here. In the late
19th century, Standard Oil, founded by
John D. Rockefeller, rapidly became the
world’s first and largest multinational
corporation. In 1911, however, the U.S.
Supreme Court, in a landmark case, ruled
it was an illegal monopoly that was using
aggressive pricing to put competitors out
of business. The court forced its break-up
into 34 smaller companies.
There is no reason yet to believe Ama-
zon is the Standard Oil of today. In retail,
for instance, it is smaller than Walmart
and in the media world it is still dwarfed
by other players. But it is growing fast
and you can be sure that regulators are
keeping an eye on just how fast.
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publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters
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Pendleton, OR 9780, or email
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