|
Volume 3 Number 12 April
29, 2005 |
|
Don't blame Microsoft It's only doing what comes naturally for
corporations The blogoshpere is in a kerfuffle and various and sundry civil rights advocates are in a lather over what they see as a perfidious action by Microsoft in abandoning its support for a gay rights bill and apparently sealing the bill's fate with a one-vote defeat. All the kerfuffled and lathered people consider this as some sort of betrayal, claiming that the Redmond Rascals bowed down to evangelistic pressure, selling out a large part of their constituency, customers and employees alike. All the concerned people are questioning Microsoft's ethics. Sitting here in Buddha-like calm, I remain singularly unlathered and unkerfuffled. Anyone who has followed this column over the years and paid the slightest bit of attention will know that I don't hold any illusions about the moral motivation of corporations. They have none. Corporations are "persons." Yes, that's true. But they are persons only in a legal sense and thanks only to the mischief of a court clerk and his margin notes in a Supreme Court ruling that ruled no such thing. Those margin notes have gained tremendous currency and subsequent court ruling have upheld the silly notion. However, while they are persons -- and super persons at that -- they lack one important thing that natural, human persons have: moral motivation. Oddly enough, despite that lack, we all expect ethical behavior from corporations, and we are all disappointed when we don't get it. At the very least, we expect corporations to adhere to some ethical code in their dealings with us, but even there it's a vain expectation. You and I behave ethically in our dealings with other people because we have some sort of moral motivation to do so. That motivation and its source vary from person to person. The only self interest that corporations have is making money. So, if they have any motivation at all, it's the motivation to make money. In fact, they have a legal obligation to do so. Generally, this motivation will lead corporations to do things that we view as ethical, but they do so only because the managers and other employees of the corporation feel that this behavior will lead to greater profits, either over the short term or the long term. Mistaking this as some sort of ethical decision by the corporation as "person" is like thinking that your washing machine loves you because it keeps your clothes so clean. Now, the managers of corporations may have moral motivation. At least we hope they do. But ultimately, they are employees of the corporate person and if they don't take actions that provide the profits that satisfy the corporation's one motivation -- more money -- they will not survive, at least for very long. Obviously, I'm talking about large publicly held corporations and not your cousin Max, the dentist, who also happens to be incorporated. The "obligation to shareholders" is a serious obligation and any corporate executive who doesn't take it seriously is going to find him or herself in an unemployment line. If it becomes more profitable for a corporation to take an action that you view as unethical, it would do it without a second thought. We also hope that corporations will act within the law, but if it becomes more profitable for a corporation to break the law, that will happen too. Suppose the much-desired liability caps are put into place. Now suppose a corporation can make $5 million by breaking the law, and face only a $250,000 penalty. What course of action do you think it will take? But while we expect corporations to deal ethically with us in our mutual business arrangements, things get dicier when we find corporations involving themselves in issues that aren't part of that core relationship. For example, it would be one thing for Microsoft to say that it will treat its gay and lesbian employees in an ethical way. It's a different story for Microsoft to involve itself in political controversies not necessarily related to its core business. It would do so if it felt such a position would help the bottom line. No corporate manager -- no matter how wealthy or powerful he might be personally -- can deliberately lead the corporation into financial peril. So, we have to assume that, at some point, Microsoft felt it had a public relations advantage in supporting the gay rights bill, and, at some later point, came to realize it might be a disadvantage. For it to abandon its previous support would only be the natural thing, as the corporation (not necessarily the individuals involved) has no moral motivation beyond profit. So, while I am blissfully unkerfuffled and unlathered, I am concerned. And what concerns me is the question of why Microsoft felt so threatened. It's important to remember
that Microsoft has weathered some tough storms. It stared down the might of
the So what brought the software giant to its knees? The story goes that the change came after a sectarian leg-breaker came in and threatened to boycott. "Nice little monopoly you've got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it." Apparently, so the story goes, once he issued the threat of a boycott, Microsoft collapsed like a cheap card table. I don't think it's that simple -- for several reasons. First, Microsoft has stared down bigger bullies than that and has had a lot of practice. As I noted above legions of techies, many of them in positions to buy or recommend products, have vowed to boycott Microsoft -- to no avail. As in the old days with IBM, no one ever got fired for buying a Microsoft product. The threat of a religious boycott doesn't seem to hold any water. First, I just don't think that rabid right-wing religious organizations have enough buying power to make that effective. So, a few churches and religious schools refusing to buy Microsoft wouldn't have much of an effect. Second, similar boycott attempts by the religious right have been dismal flops. They tried to boycott the mouse theme parks because they -- horror of horrors -- let gay people in. It flopped. They rail against sex and violence in the movies, but if someone puts out a movie without sex and violence, it flops. They constantly bash TV shows, but there seems to be a direct proportion between the trashiness of a show and its ratings. The threat-of-a-boycott argument just doesn't seem to fly. So, the investigative reporter in me keeps saying that something else is afoot. The sectarian leg-breaker spoke for someone with greater authority than himself. And I'm not talking about a cloud-based "greater authority," but one who lives in more humble surroundings inside the "Beltway." And I have a sneaking suspicious that the boycott threat involved more than a few churches and schools. Maybe I'm wandering close to the edge of a conspiracy theory here, but the explanations I've seen so far don't make any sense. Gates and Ballmer sniffed the wind and they didn't like what they smelled, causing them to abruptly change course. And that scares me. So, while bloggers and civil rights activists are yelling at Microsoft, I consider it more of a canary in the mineshaft. When the canary rolls over on its back, you don't waste a lot of time yelling at the canary to get up. You start wondering what the heck made it roll over in the first place. When I sniff the wind these days, I get a strong odor of theocratic totalitarianism -- and it's getting stronger by the day. Just last week, we had religious extremists -- aided and abetted by people at the highest levels of our government -- advocating violence and murder against judges to who didn't hew to the theocratic orthodoxy. When you mix corporate interests, religion, a cult of personality versus a nation of laws, mixed with threats of violence, you produce at least the faint odor of fascism. I hope that's not what I smell. So, I don't have anything bad to say about Microsoft's action in this situation. Like a blown fuse, it has done what it is supposed to do. But as when any fuse blows, the real solution is to find out what caused it -- and fix it. |
|
© Copyright 2005 Carlton Vogt |