Glenn Jackson's Article

The Players Have Changed,

But the Game Remains the Same

By Glenn R. Jackson

In an earlier paper “Investigating Competition as an Ethically Neutral Process”(1) I focused on the dangers emanating from a valueless “competitive model” absent any controlling ethical framework within the American Big Business environment. A reliance on competition alone to yield ethically valued results is the problem infecting the current American business and political environments. The argument is stated that American business in the post-Cold War world, having proved its competitive superiority, is no longer being shaped by its environment, but is beginning to shape the surrounding environment to its sole benefit. The recent accounting scandals rocking America’s Business world demonstrate the result of a competitive process working outside of any ethical framework, i.e. quantitative results (stock valuation) are prized over any qualitative higher value.

At the end of yet another election cycle, a similar complaint can be made about American politics. Any value to society has been supplanted by the win at any cost “competitive model” of the modern two-party system. The remaking of the American social order is being driven by American big business aided by a self-perpetuating U.S. political class. The litany of charges to be laid at the feet of American business and their political accomplices is astounding. Trade agreements like NAFTA and fast-track, dismantling the U.S. manufacturing base, skilled worker replacement programs like H-1B, and mass immigration for an unskilled worker infusion and a new consumer class have all been fostered on the United States since the end of the Cold War at a rapid rate. The result of these changes have been a shift in American earning power, lose of meaningful jobs, fractures in American society along cultural fault lines, and a weakening of American accomplishment.

By and large, a society's highest values have been those that promote stability for that society. Whether this stability springs from a guarantee for the greatest amount of "good" for the greatest number of individuals, or from an enlightened self-interest that realizes that others’ interest are important for ones’ own individual self-interest, stability is the final result. Christianity, with its emphasis upon how man ought to act and upon what the motive behind those acts should be, has placed Man's relation with his fellow Man as one of our highest values. Our higher values then are those that make society possible, though it is composed of a collection of individuals with as many goals, needs, wants and dreams as there are individuals. Even given that Man is the "social animal" that biologists and psychologists say he is, it is exceedingly difficult to believe that Man would be able to build the complex societies that he has without values that help him to transcend his own selfishness.

A lot has been written concerning ‘game theory,’ but for our purposes it is not necessary to reproduce that here, only to acknowledge the win-lose of our current Big Business environment. We need to recognize the aspects of games in our current business and political environments, and that American society is losing for every Big Business-centric win. In particular it is the aspect of emulation within the competitive process that drives Big Business in opposition to beneficial results for American society. It is emulation -- the striving for superiority and the spirit of rivalry, that concerns us most in our examination of changes to society's fundamental values and ethics, because "The modern idea of enjoyment as well as of achievement has come to consist chiefly in keeping up with or getting ahead of other people in a rivalry for things about whose significance, beyond furnishing objectives for the competition, little question is asked.”(2)

Emulation, as a motive, seems to be inconsistent with any of society's values for promoting stability. Rivalry between individuals and the institutions of society contradicts these values completely. If our complex American society is possible because of values that help Man to transcend his own selfishness, then any motive that promotes the achieving of one's own utility at the expense of another’s can only be seen as destructive of society's stability. The contest motive absent any ethical framework, as represented in our current business environment, is therefore fostering an adherence to values contrary to all that society has held as the highest. The individuals increasing dependence on business for his livelihood (perhaps existence?) heightens the influence of the new business motive of emulation in American society. The emphasis on success, at the expense of the people, is therefore spreading throughout American society to its detriment.

But if the motive of emulation is so detrimental to society's values, how has it managed to survive, and not only to survive, but also to become dominate in our society? "The striking fact in modern life is the virtually complete separation between the spiritual ethics which constitutes its accepted theory of conduct and the unethical, uncivilized notion of efficiency which forms its substitute for a practical working ideal.''(3) It is because of a perceived choice between the efficiency of business and society's highest values, where the efficiency of business is seen as the direct result of the contest motive, that has gained unquestioned support. Society is forcing on itself a hard choice between business competition and it's efficiency, and society's own highest values and the stability they ensure. Until the American people force accountability for the absence of value in American Business and Politics, the competitive process will follow the dictates of the saying “garbage in, garbage out,” and it will do so with ruthless efficiency.

As you follow the election results of 2002 and look for a new day dawning as a result, remember to think this thought, “the players have changed, but the game remains the same.”

1 (http://www.americanreformation.org/Philosophy/glenn/competition.htm)

2 Frank Knight, "The Ethics of Competition," first published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 37 (1923), pp. 579-624. Reprinted in The Ethics of Competition (New York: Harper and Bros., 1935), pp. 41-75. All
references are from original printing.

3 Frank Knight, "The Ethics of Competition," p. 621.

Glenn Jackson is Chairman of the American Reformation Project and a columnist for USA Daily. Glenn is also a former State Chairman for Buchanan Reform and former state Chairman of the Georgia Freedom Party. Glenn also served on the Executive Committee of the Reform Party USA. Glenn holds an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University in Atlanta.