Many modern corporations have been formed by or taken over by irrational egoists similar to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead character Gail Wynand. These Nietzschean thugs think objectively, but in contrast to an objectivist rational egoist, they believe that it is right for them to do anything that they can get away with as long as it advances their interests. In others words, for these thugs, it is fine to lie, cheat, steal, and murder as long as no one believes that they lie, cheat, steal, and murder. It is because of the existence of these irrational egoists that egoism, individualism, and capitalism all get an unjustly bad reputation.
In order to secure themselves in their positions despite occassionally revealing their nature to certain people out of necessity, these Nietzschean thugs put rules in place which insure that these few witnesses will be easy to discredit or otherwise destroy. The most common form of corporate rules which are used ro accomplish this are those which require employees to be Kantian subjectivists like Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead character Peter Keating. Examples of these sorts of rules include: “The customer is always right,” “Employees must maintain good relationships with coworkers and clients,” “Employees must trust the intentions of other employees,” “Employees shall accept and agree with the ideas of the majority.”
In every case, these rules force employees to either act against their own best interest by complying with the rules to the letter or otherwise be guilty of misconduct for not complying with the rules. In either case, the employee is discredited. If the majority of employees comply with these rules, then any employee that switches to acting in their own best interest above those of the company can be fired for misconduct and thus be discredited among the other employees. If the majority of employees do not comply with these rules, but are able to keep their jobs by forming cliches and mutually concealing eachother’s misconduct, then any employee that starts to act in their own best interest above those of the cliche will be disavowed by the cliche and thier past misconduct will be reavealed allowing the company to fire them and thus discrediting them among the other employees.
With all of their employees thus discreditable, the “Gail Wynand”‘s can run amok with little or no fear of repercussions as long as they can avoid creating any hard evidence of their evils.
#writing #nonFiction
Copyright © 2017 Jonathan Hart
