Is business becoming more political?
... because politics has failed us?
This week, I looked on in shock as I watched the CEO of one of America’s biggest health insurance companies get shot in midtown Manhattan.
The shock was multifold. One, the shooting happened right next to a hotel that I have frequented while I’m in New York (so I guess I’m not staying there anymore). Two, I’ve always thought that Manhattan is extremely safe because it’s always crowded (but you’ll see on the video clip that there’s only one guy in the vicinity who witnesses the shooting — and he promptly flees).
And three, it seems like the shooter communicated his motive quite openly. On the bullet casings were written words like “defend”, “deny” and “depose” — all of which are apparently allusions to how health insurance firms actively try to avoid paying claims by “delaying, denying and defending.”
This is what really sets this thing apart for me. We’re used to seeing political leaders and public officials get assassinated over politics and public policy. Presidents get shot by rebels. Ministers get shot by dissidents. But we don’t generally see business leaders getting shot over a public policy issue. After the killing, a lot of people came out on social media to low-key empathize with the assassination and air their complaints against American health insurance firms — that they’re too expensive, that they frequently deny patients critical drugs, and that they do all that they can to maximize profits at the expense of other people’s health.
But here’s the thing: It’s not the fault of businesspeople that they do business. The very job description of a CEO is to maximize profits, minimize costs, and increase sales. It doesn’t matter whether they’re selling houses, hammers or health insurance. That’s literally their job.
The problem is that too many businesses are now doing the job of governments. Businesses are now in charge of providing healthcare, education, even clean air. In India, where air pollution has been choking millions of people over the last couple of months, some hotels are now charging customers for rooms with cleaner air. Yes, you read that right — in parts of India, you literally have to pay out of your pocket to get access to breathable air.
People are right to feel angry about all this. Air is a basic necessity for life. It can’t be distributed to folks on the basis of their income and spending capacity.
But the blame for this commodification of life cannot possibly lie with business executives. It’s not the job of Delhi’s hotels to clean up the city’s air. They don’t get paid taxes for it. And I know that this is hard to hear, but it’s also not the job of health insurance providers to have the best interests of patients on their mind. They don’t get paid taxes for that either.
In recent years, people all over the world have gradually blurred the line between the job of government and the job of business. Since the start of this century, it has been fashionable to cast government as “inefficient,” but the question that people then ask is not “how can we make government more efficient at what it does.” It is “how can we make government do less?” And by extension, what the government doesn’t do, the private sector has to do.
This is fundamentally problematic, because government and business are literally the opposite of each other. When you work in government, your mandate is to think about society and the world at large. When you work in the private sector, your mandate is to think about your company and yourself. In government, you think about how to prevent large corporations from becoming too powerful. In the private sector, you think about how to make your corporation larger and more powerful.
The thing is that it’s not even in the best interest of businesses to do the job of governments. It’s also not in their interests to have weak governments that don’t do their jobs. When businesses do the job of governments, people will treat business leaders the same way they treat political leaders — as employees of taxpayers.
This is a fundamentally dangerous bargain for businesses to enter into. Governments must often incur a financial loss in order to improve social well-being — to give people a good education, healthy lives, or water and air. If businesses did the job of governments, it would stretch their resources, hurt their shareholders, and endanger their personnel — as Brian Thompson found out.
So, what should businesses do about all this? For one, it won’t hurt to integrate policy experts into their ranks to account for social impact. If businesses are going to do the job of governments, they might as well hire people with the right skills for it.
Second, put your money behind the right form of politics. For too long, business leaders have made the shortsighted mistake of backing political candidates who want to cut government spending. They believe that anti-government political candidates would reduce red tape and loosen regulations, thereby facilitating business. But if politicians won’t do their jobs, business leaders will have to pick up their slack in public.
Third, support the reorientation of electoral politics away from nonsense and back to sense. In recent years, elections have increasingly focused more on identity wars and less on the actual work of governance. Voters have expressed their anger over broken healthcare systems, unequal economies, and lack of opportunities by throwing ruling parties out of power. But politicians have responded to these frustrations by doubling down on the wrong questions — questions like “how do you feel about the color of your neighbor’s skin” or “which God do you want to see worshipped?”
It’s time for everybody to do the jobs that they’re supposed to do.