The Soullessness of Big

The Soullessness of the Big

By Rev. Enno K. Limvere

The Left rails against Big Corporations and Big Bank Accounts. The Right rails against Big Government and Big Brother. I think they are both right. But! We cannot have one without the other, but both in reduced sizes.. When I served in a community in North Dakota in the 2000’s, the manufacturing plant owned by one of the Fortune 500(?) companies, to maximize profits they ran 24 hours a day/7 days a week. If I remember right, they did shut down for Christmas Day. I read an article in a health magazine (Prevent) that those who worked overnight shifts had a higher rate of divorce, a higher rate of cancer, and a shorter life span. When I mentioned this to one of my church members who worked there, they responded with that article is posted on the employees’ lounge. I brought this up to our local ministerial group, and not to mention many of our church members had to work on weekends and miss worship, we concluded we could do nothing. If we, or our local city government, did try to raise a stink, this corporation would just move to a different community. Which they eventually did anyway, because they could make more money, a bigger profit, by moving out of the US.

There has to be a balance, the government has to have some influence over the businesses that are in our community, county, state, or nation. The business has to have the freedom to make a living. The community has to have the balance between the two and a priority of not just jobs, but good paying jobs, a healthy community, and the pursuit of happiness (as it says in our Declaration of Independence). When there is an imbalance tipped toward a big business, then the community suffers by having too much of its wealth leaving to those larger corporations and there's no local roots and real investments. Too many local communities sell themselves to the larger corporations just so they can have any kind of jobs and the prestige, believing they will have security for themselves. Isaiah talks about how we trade our faith, our souls, our relationship with God, for money. Think about “It’s a Wonderful Life”, Potterville vs. Bailey Park.

Looking to our nation, it is the law that a corporation's first responsibility is to its stockholders. Not to the community, to our nation, but to the stockholders’ financial well-being. There are states, such as Minnesota, that now have an alternative to this ‘type’ of business that they can include the community’s well-being into their articles of incorporation. But the majority of corporations have in their by-laws, in a choice between the good of the community in which they do business (and the nation) and the well-being of their employees, or making and giving more money to those who own the stock; they are legally obligated to favor the stockholders. We are to love our neighbors, we are to care for the least of these, we are not to have our hearts set on the things of this world. Think about how in the 1990’s there were 40 major banks all about the same size, now there are 4 with each being too big to fail. In our agriculture, there are also about 4 major corporations that control our food production and distribution. Across all industries, even entertainment with Netflix, Amazon, and Disney controlling most of what we can watch and how we can access it. There is always the claim they have to merge to keep competitive, but corporations grow so large there becomes no real competition. Even cooperatives, which were supposed to put the local communities first and be accountable to the members (where each got one vote) are now acting like corporations with profit and merger as their mantras, not good products, nor services, nor equity, as the way they do business. Again, all in the name of manna (their idol being money).

Spending money in your local businesses are the best way to invest in your community because most of the money stays in your local community rather than being sent to a corporation out of state, with its headquarters out of the country to avoid taxes so there can be more profit. Though Wal-Marts and other corporations give out checks to local charity and community groups, they still take much more money out of the community than they will ever invest. As opposed to the local owners of businesses who buy their homes, cars, and food in that community and invest not just money, but their time and talent in the local Lions Club, coaching youth sports, and singing in the church choir. Local businesses also pay their employees better and care for them, will often help them through tough times, rather than see them as a commodity to make the corporation more money, and dump them when they stop being just their worker bee. There is very little difference between cities now-a-days and even rural communities, because the same businesses are in each. Local shops, restaurants, and businesses are all chains. We can drive across America and eat the same thing in the same restaurant almost every day or shop at a Wal-Mart or General Dollar and stay at a Holiday Inn Express. This sucks out our individuality, our creativeness, and builds a mono-culture that tricks us into accepting what is there, rather than working for the betterment of all. God’s kingdom and world is diverse, each with its local eco-system, not all areas are forests, or plains, or mountains. But our economic system is trying to be one-size fits all, and that is without soul, without spirit, and without growth, just decay is soon to follow.

Wealth disparity is at an all-time high, Jesus tells us we cannot serve wealth and God.

There is no soul in a Big Business where there are thousands of employees. Some do better than others, and all have some employees, managers, and leaders who do care, but the DNA is already written that the business is about making money PERIOD! When a corporation is spread over cities, states, and even countries, there is no way to see the humanity in each worker, employee, customer, and they eventually start treating each other not as humans, but as transactions. No matter how many movies are made about people who change the business world by reminding the leaders about hearts and connection, the lure of greed always waits in the background. We even find this in the charities when they get national, the charity has to pay their leaders like they are running a for-profit corporation and the leaders in turn, bring the ethic to cut out the human connection in the name of efficiency, not wanting to help people or change the world, but to build numbers of meals given, people housed, or donations given. This also applies to government, but to have a “government small enough to drown in a bathtub” as Grover Norquist once quipped, while corporations are too big to fail, we will surely live in an oligarchy with no unions, no benefits, no weekends off, much less vacation, and no middle class.
Big government is also soulless, whether we are talking about socialist, communist, fascist, or dictatorship. In all these types of government, those who control the government also control the businesses and community organizations. There is very much a vast disparity about who has wealth and power, and who has the basics of food, shelter, health care, and access to education and advancement. It doesn't matter too much if the government is communist or a dictatorship, as their control over the economy, education, and local communities is pretty much the same. 

There is an alternative to having bigger governments and bigger corporations. There has been periods in our nations history when we were better, but not too many. Since the 1980's and Reagan, the 1990's and the new economic push of Clinton which started favoring business over workers, George W. Bush big push for continued deregulation which resulted in the 2008 crash, and even Obama favoring bailing out the corporations rather than the people and communities. First, we have to rescind Citizen's United that allows corporations and billionaires to spend millions, tens and hundreds, of dollars on lobbying which help them make and keep billions of dollars. Second, we need to revisit the monopoly laws, update them, and actively enforce them. Third, we need to re-do our laws concerning corporations that hold them responsible not just for profits, but the way they do business in our town, cities, and states. Instead of one corporation own many others, let us work towards Pepsi own Pepsi and not Taco Bell and other fast food places; Disney own Disney and not Star Wars, Star Trek, and ABC, and Conagra not own Duncan Hines, Healthy Choice, and Orville Redenbacher's Popcorn.
The top 1% of the wealthiest Americans own 90% of all private assets. This is why, the vast majority of the profits are channeled higher and higher and concentrated into a smaller and smaller circle. The bottom 40% of Americans have no real assets and the bottom 20% are swamped with debt (which they owe to the top 1% in payday loans, credit cards, and bank fees which is perfectly legally rigged).
How big is big enough? That is tricky for a non-economist like me to answer definitively. But rather than have 10 corporations own almost all of our food economy (https://www.businessinsider.com/10-companies-control-the-food-industry-2016-9), which was $1 trillion dollars in 2017; how about no company can control more than 1% of the pie, which means they can only have about $10 billion in sales a year, rather than $100 billion (not sure how the 10 do distribute, but estimating they are roughly an equal share). With 100+ companies, we should have a more equitable distribution of headquarters among the states and cities and more local investment as was talked about before. AND rather than the concentrated giving 10 CEO's hundreds of millions of dollars in salary and compensation, we will, again, have 100+ CEO's getting tens of millions of dollars spread throughout our country, investing their wealth locally.
Jesus tells us we cannot serve God and wealth. So far, we are proving we would much rather serve wealth. I hope we can change that.