Managerial Capitalism: Being and Becoming

At first glance, Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist stance on private property and the process of accumulating profit (or wealth) may seem to extend a vote of confidence to the business manager as a type. After all, managers manage the private property of stockholders (which can include themselves) with a fiduciary duty to do so to increase shareholder value by maximizing profit. The notion of profit-seeking by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost is arguably too simplistic. Squeezing a workforce too much, for example, can backfire in the long term. Nietzsche was concerned about such a thing happening even though he claims that the vast majority of laborers must be kept to subsistence wages for culture to be possible. He castigates petty, short-sighted managers who do not look out for the spiritual and economic welfare of workers, and yet holds that those workers must be slavish in the sense of being exploited by employers so culture can emerge and be sustained by the rich. To be for such exploitation and yet against petty cost-cutting managers renders Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy interesting as well as useful in terms of keeping a capitalist economy from being reduced to the mentality of its bottom-feeder producers. I first discuss the matter of exploitation and then turn to how Nietzsche addresses his wider socio-economic philosophy more specifically to human-resource management. Within the wider subject-heading of exploitation, very different approaches, or mentalities, to human resource management can be discerned. In dichotomous terms, there can be said to be a pathos of distance between enlightened self-interest and selfish, short-sighted greed.

The full essay is at "Managerial Capitalism."

Elon Musk’s Controversial Politics: Beyond the Financials

As U.S. President Trump signed his “Big Beautiful Bill” into law on July 4, 2025, Elon Musk, shareholder and CEO of Tesla, announced that he would create a new political party (or “group” in European-speak). Musk opposed the projected trillions of dollars that the bill would add to the debt held by the U.S. federal government, though, as CEO of SpaceX, he was fine with cutting a trillion dollars from Medicaid, which provides health coverage to the poorest of the poor, and from food assistance while the defense budget was augmented. Musk’s proposed “America” group would likely draw support from Trump’s “MAGA” base, rather than from moderate Republicans and any Democrats. Whether Musk was more motivated by breaking up the political duopoly of the two major parties, or groups, to increase the practical options for voters or to split Trump’s support and punish the Republican party, such controversial political involvement by a major shareholder CEO is without doubt risky business. This is not to say that CEO’s should not be active politically apart from business strategy, for even business managers are citizens and thus may feel compelled to become active politically. This is to be lauded especially if the motive is out of duty to repair or otherwise improve a political system.

The full essay is at "Elon Musk's Controversial Politics."

On Embodied Souls in Business: Hinduism and Christianity

A man whose chosen Hindu name is Vridavanath spoke at Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025 on the plight and ultimate aim of an embodied soul as described in the Bhagavad-Gita. A conditioned soul/self (atman) that has entered the material realm and is thus subject to karmic consequences can come back to the divine source of all: the One that is in all. As material, embodied beings while alive, that is, as both biological and spiritual, we are prone to getting locked into dualities of attachment and aversion, which in turn play right into suffering. We forget that we are wearing material masks, and that our real identity (atman) is greater than our material roles that we assume in our daily lives. Through our actions, we bind ourselves by the law of karma. Before being born into the material realm, a person’s unembodied soul (atman) knew Krishna, but as embodied, the soul/self relates to other corporeal bodies rather than to other people as spiritual beings and thus in compassion. Why does Brahman or Krishna—the respective impersonal or personal notions of Absolute Truth—create the world with separateness from the divine included?  Furthermore, how is a devotee of Krishna to navigate working in business, given the separateness woven into the very fabric of our daily existence as material and spiritual beings?

The full essay is at "On Embodied Souls in Business."

On the Aristocracy of Wealth

The rule of a few—aristocracy. The rule of the wealthy—plutocracy. Where the few, being valued above the many, are determined principally on account of wealth, the two forms of government fuse into the aristocracy of the moneyed interest. The cardinal virtue is the fundamental desire for more—otherwise known as greed. Justice is limited to peerage, or amicitia (friendship) based on having wealth. This sort of justice, which can be derived from Cicero, is antithetical to justice as caritas seu benevolentia universalis (love, that is, universal benevolence), which comes from Plato, Augustine, and Leibniz.

The full essay is at "On the Aristocracy of Wealth."

A Professional Misnomer: Self-Proclaimed Professionals

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the term, "professional" had become such a cherished word in the American lexicon that every American had decided that he or she is one. Evincing the Lake Wobegon effect—the tendency of most people to describe themselves or their abilities as above average—nearly everyone is wont to say, “I am a professional.” On housing listings on Craigslist, for example, people routinely use the word to signify that they are not students. In fact, even some students characterize themselves as professionals (though not as professional students!). Such common usage belies the term's claim to having a specific meaning. Moreover, the tendency of non-professions to deem themselves as professions nonetheless may evince one of the downsides of democracy—namely, its proclivity to excess in terms of self-entitlement. This is particularly likely to ensue from a citizenry that is lacking in self-discipline, virtue and knowledge. 

The full essay is at "A Professional Misnomer."

The Hebrew Bible on Wealth

The early Hebrews considered wealth to be an integral part of human perfection and, moreover, what ought to be.[1] The ideal man was wealthy and leisured, and yet occupied with honorable work.[2] In the Torah, as long as the Hebrews as a people obey God, including dutifully acting as stewards rather than as selfish exploiters of the land that God has provided, poverty should be nonexistent in Israel. “There need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God.”[3] Blessed wealth is a reward for fidelity to Yahweh, whereas poverty here is indicative of, or even punishment for, disobedience, which will evidently always be the case in Israel, for, “There will always be poor people in the land.”[4] The conditionality leaps off the page, as does the notion of collective justice, and yet wealthy individuals, including business practitioners, are held to account. The ethic of work is upheld even though labor in Genesis is due to original sin, and poverty is eschewed as sin. 

The full essay is at "The Hebrew Bible on Wealth."

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[1]. Charles R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Wealth and Work (London: Epworth Press, 1924), 21.

[2]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 22, 33-34.

[3]. Deut. 15:4-5.

[4]. Deut. 15:11.

Pope Francis: Religious and Secular Arguments for Governments Subordinating Markets to Social Norms

The documentary, Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018) chiefly lays out the pope’s critique of economic Man. The film begins with references to climate change too loosely linked to the global population figure of 8 million humans, 1 billion of whom are unnecessarily living in poverty. The viewer is left to fill in the gaps, such as that because as biological organisms we must consume and use energy, the hyperextended overpopulation of the species is the root cause of climate- and ecosystem-changing CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans. Arguably, the salvific Son of God or the means into the Kingdom of God enjoy pride of place in the gospels, but compassion for the poor as well as outcasts and the sick is indeed a message that Jesus stresses in the faith narratives. Rather than being a sign of sin, poverty, especially if voluntary,  can permit the sort of humility that is much superior to the pride of the Pharisees. In the documentary, Jorge Bergoglio, who took the name Francis in becoming pope of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, is a practical man who points to the sickness or temptation of greed that keeps humanity from riding itself of poverty, unnecessarily. Moreover, the hegemony of the market, with its culture of consumerism and commoditization, comes at the cost of the common good, which to Francis has a spiritual basis. Abstractly speaking, harmony, which inherently respects its own limitations, should have priority over greed and markets. Both of these can go to excess without enough built-in constraints as occurred before and during the financial crisis of 2008, with poverty plaguing humanity more rather than less as a result.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis."

Behind Corporate Loopholes: Wealth and Power

A company in the U.S. wants a tax loophole to apply. Starbucks, for example, wanted to be able to use the manufacturing deduction by stretching manufacturing to include the roasting of coffee beans. So in 2004 the company hired Michael Evans, a lobbyist at K&L Gates who had just a year before worked as a top lawyer on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, which writes tax law. Evans was able to urge his former colleagues in the Senate to expand the definition of manufacturing to include roasting in a clause added to a 243-page tax bill called the American Jobs Creation Act.  As you might imagine, Starbucks was not the only company to get a tax break written into that law. By 2013, the manufacturing deduction had saved Starbucks $88 million that the company would otherwise have had to pay in corporate income tax. In 2012, corporate tax breaks and loopholes added $150 billion in lost revenue for the federal government, increasing the budget deficit by that amount.[1] Three lessons can be gleamed from the hidden corporate loopholes.

The full essay is at "Behind Corporate Loopholes." 

1 Ben Hallman and Chris Kirkham, “As Obama Confronts Corporate Tax Reform, Past Lessons Suggest Lobbyists Will Fight For Loopholes,” The Huffington Post, February 15, 2013.

The Fire in Notre Dame Cathedral during Holy Week: Divine Retribution?

Just in terms of how the business and political elites reacted to the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the want of a distinctly religious explanation reflected the hegemony of the secular culture in the E.U. at the time. How the incident, which occurred on April 15, 2019, might fit into an established religious narrative was largely ignored, at least by the media reporting on the fire and its aftermath. Instead, the focus was on the impact on French politics and the donations being made to repair the damage. In particular, the matter of billionaires donating a hundred or two hundred euros fueled a debate on the morality of giving so much when giving to the poor could ease economic inequality, rather than on the religious legitimacy of being rich even with the good use in rebuilding a cathedral. The media at least was silent on the question of whether God had exacted divine retribution against the Roman Catholic Church for having pedophile priests and high-ranked clerics covering them up to safeguard the reputation of the universal Church. That the fire occurred during Holy Week makes the lack of any application of the faith narratives particularly striking, for what if a fire in a gem of the Roman Catholic Church during Holy Week was aimed at getting the attention of the clergy and laity?

The full essay is at "The Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral."

Should Health Care Be a Right?

In the Spring of 2019, President Trump promised that a Republican alternative to "Obamacare" would soon be unveiled; the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, quickly informed the president that the prospects of such legislation passing the Democratic-controlled U.S. House were zilch. This virtually guaranteed that health care would be play a salient role in the upcoming 2020 presidential race. The underlying question, I submit, has been whether health care ought to be a right, which the government would be obligated to ensure. Such a right would obviously not be one of those that hold government back (e.g., the right to liberty). Whether a right ensured by government or holding government back, the nature of a right is such that it is to be respected by others, whether individuals, organizations, or the state. Such respect, being an obligation, constrains those others. Hence, health care as a right has been controversial in the U.S. 

The full essay is at "Survival of the Fittest."

God's Gold through the Centuries

In the wake of the financial crisis that came to a head in September of 2008, people might have been wondering if sufficient moral constraints on the greed on Wall Street are available, even possible. The ability of traders to create complex derivative securities that are difficult for regulators to regulate, much less understand, may have people looking for ethical or even religious constraints. It would be only natural to ask if such “soft” restraint mechanisms really do have the puissance to do the trick. Here’s the rub: the tricksters are typically the last to avail themselves of ethical or religious systems, and they the wrongdoers are the ones in need of the restraint. Blankfein said of his bank, Goldman Sachs, that it had been doing God’s work. About a week after saying that, he had to walk his statement back and admit that the bankers had does some things that were morally wrong. Although divine omnipotence is by definition not limited by human ethical systems, it is hard to imagine a divine decree telling bankers to tell their clients one thing (buy subprime mortgage derivatives) while taking the opposite position on the bank’s proprietary position (shorting the derivatives, beyond being a counterparty to clients). Divine duplicity seems to represent an oxymoron on a megascale rather than a justification for greed. As the crisis erupted and was subsequently managed by public officials in government and new managers brought in to salvage AIG, I was researching the history of Christian thought on profit-seeking and wealth. I have since published an academic text and a nonfiction book, which develops further on the treatise on the topic. As the book is too recondite for sane people (i.e., outside of academia), I am writing a non-fiction book on the topic for a broader readership. To whet the appetites of those of you who are waiting for something more readable than a recondite thesis, I present a brief account of my original research on the topic here. 

For the full essay, see "God's Gold through the Centuries."

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See related essay: "Religious Sources of Business Ethics"

The academic treatise: Godliness and Greed: Shifting Christian Thought on Profit and Wealth 

The non-fiction book: God's Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.

Income Inequality: Natural or Artificial?

In the United States, the disposable income of families in the middle of the income distribution shrank by 4 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to the OECD.[1] Over roughly the same period, the income of the top 1 percent increased by 11 percent. In 2012, the average CEO of one of the 350 largest U.S. companies made about $14.07 million, while the average pay for a non-supervisory worker was $51,200.[2] In other words, the average CEO made 273 times more than the average worker. In 1965, CEOs were paid just 20 times more; by 2000, the figure peaked at 383 times. The ratio fell in the wake of the dot-com bubble and then in the financial crisis and its recession, but in 2010 the ratio began to rebound. According to an OECD report, rising incomes of the top 1 percent in the E.U. accounted for the rising income inequality in Europe in 2012, though that level of inequality was “notably less” than the one in the U.S.”[3]  Nevertheless, in both cases the increasing economic gap between the very rich and everyone else was not limited to the E.U. and U.S.; a rather pronounced global phenomenon of increasing economic inequality was clearly in the works by 2013.

The full essay is at "Natural vs. Artificial Income Inequality."

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1.Eduardo Porter, “Inequality in America: The Data is Sobering,” The New York Times, July 30, 2013.

2. Mark Gongloff, “CEOs Paid 273 Times More Than Workers in 2012: Study,” The Huffington Post, June 26, 2013.

3. Kaja B. Fredricksen, “Income Inequality in the European Union,” OECD, Economics Department Working Paper No. 952, 2012.

Schindler’s List

In German-occupied Poland during World War I, Oskar Schindler spent millions to save 600 Jews from the death camps. In the 1993 film, Schindler’s List, the gradual transformation of the luxuriant capitalist is evident as the film unfolds. At the end,  he comes to an emotional realization as to the worth of money as compared with human lives. He realizes that had he not spent so lavishly, he could have saved even more lives. He realizes, in effect, his selfishness that had blinded him even to the obvious severe suffering of the Jews around him. The story is thus not simply that of greed giving way to compassion. 

The full essay is at "Schindler's List."

Physicians and Lawyers: On the Presumption of Ignorance

It would surprise virtually every American (but only a few Europeans) to know that neither the JD nor the MD degree is a doctorate.   Each one is the first degree in its school, or discipline.  Yet we presume them to evince advanced knowledge, even allowing people with two undergraduate degrees to be "professors" (really instructors) in American law and medical schools. In the school of law, the sequence of degrees is: JD (same as the LLB), LLM (hint: M...Masters), and JSD (Doctorate in Juridical Science). The JSD degree includes advance study, a comprensive exam (an academic exam graded by faculty--not a industry-qualifying exam like the bar), and a defended dissertation. A doctoral degree must be the terminal degree of a field, contain a comprehensive exam, and include significant original research in a defended dissertation. The JD misses on all three points. The title of the first degree in law, the LLB (bachalors in letters of law) was replaced with "JD" largely for marketing purposes in 1901 in the founding of the U of Chicago law school (by three Harvard professors) because prospective students were complaining about having two "B" degrees after seven years of school.  People don't like to think they have gone to school for seven or eight years for two undergraduate degrees, but this is precisely what they have done. Nevertheless, the new law school in need of students complied with the "customer" complaint with a feat of mirrored marketing that was perhaps intentionally ambiguous.  To eviscerate the ambiguity in  Juris Doctor and a doctorate, one must look beyond the mere words.

The full essay is at "Professionals Over the Top." 

Wealth as a Societal Value in the E.U. and U.S.: The Case of Financial Reform

The E.U. and U.S differ markedly in the degree to which the interests of big business are etched in the respective societies and polities. That is to say, the difference goes beyond the question of the relative influences of the lobbyists. I contend that the relative proclivity societally in favor of business in the U.S. tilts the political playing-field excessively in the direction of the financial interests at the expense of the public good, which I take to be well represented generally by a full, equally-weighted spectrum of views. I further contend that influence is easier for financial-sector lobbyists in the United States than in the European  Union because the societal values in the former lean more in their favor. By analogy,  it is easier to run downhill than even on a flat surface.

The full essay is at "Wealth as a Societal Value."

Royalty: Natural or Exaggerated?

On April 29, 2011, the world watched in utter fascination as a crown prince in one of the E.U. states married a wealthy commoner in London's Westminster Church--the same edifice in which Queen Elizabeth had married in 1947.  The prince is of course William, and his bride is Kate (or Catherine to the purists), who in one hour's time went from being the daughter of two wealthy commoners to royalty.  It is as though she leap-frogged from “the many” past “the few” to join “the one”--the firm. My question is whether these distinctions, involving birth as well as wealth, are natural in terms of human nature or exaggerated artifices borne of excessive privilege and power.

The full essay is at "The Wedding of the Century: Royalty as Natural or Exaggerated?"

A U.S. Visa Fast-Track For Rich Investors

The New York Times reported in December 2011 that affluent foreigners had been rushing to take advantage of a U.S. immigration program. The foreign applicants must invest at least $500,000 in construction projects within the United States. The number of applicants had nearly doubled since the end of 2008 to more than 3,800 in the 2011 fiscal year. The intent of the program is to spur economic development at a time of high unemployment. Yet the program has also been characterized as a cash-for-visas scheme. Besides the question of whether the program’s rules have been stretched in New York City to qualify projects in prosperous areas for special concessions, an ethical question can be raised concerning who should get a visa.

The full essay is at "Visa Fast-Track for the Rich."

Does Opportunity Justify Economic Inequality?

From 1993 to 2010, the incomes of the richest 1 percent of Americans grew 58 percent while the rest had a 6.4 percent increase.  In 2010, the first year of an economic recovery, the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93% of the income gains. Beyond the danger to the American republics in there being an economic elite so far removed from the vast majority of the population is the question of whether the trend is baleful, economically speaking. It is not clear that even such an income gain being snagged by so few registered in the minds of the general populous as a problem. The key to any concern would seem to be whether opportunity for the many is compromised as a result of extreme economic inequality.

The full essay is at "Economic Inequality."

Source:

Eduardo Porter, “Inequality Undermines Democracy,” The New York Times, March 21, 2012. 

The U.S. Senate as Protector of the Interests of the Rich

In the U.S. Constitutional Convention, Governeur Morris said on July 2, 1787, that the “Rich will strive to establish their dominion & enslave the rest. They always did. They always will. The proper security [against] them is to form them into a separate interest.” By this he meant the U.S. Senate. The democratic principle in the U.S. House and the aristocratic spirit in the U.S. Senate “will then controul each other.” (Madison, p. 233) Having the State Legislatures appoint their U.S. Senators—as was the case until 1913—would defeat the independence of the Senate, and hence its function as a check on the excesses of democracy in the U.S. House.  Such excesses had just been evinced in Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, wherein the legislature there had sided with the former soldiers who had not been paid for their service but were still to make payments on their debts. In other words, one of the purposes of the U.S. Senate as originally envisioned was to protect property (including creditor interests). 

The full essay is at "The U.S. Senate as Protector of the Rich."

The Basis of American Aristocracy: Wealth & Property

In the constitutional convention of the United States in 1787, the property-interests were well-represented. Even so, a fear of a plutocracy was voiced by those property-protectors as well. While one might conclude at first glance that the wealthy delegates were duplicitous, their position was not self-contradictory, even if the bias toward wealth is discomforting for those of us who value representative democracy.

The full essay is at "Basis of American Aristocracy."