Tycoonism

Tycoonism is a term I intend to try and popularize over time as I write on the subject of ethics and corporate greed. As I choose to define it, tycoonism is the concept whereby, once a company becomes discontent with merely being successesful, it becomes greedy and chooses, instead, to do business in a way that further increases profits but does so at the expense of some one, or some thing else.

It comes at the expense of consumer safety. It happens at the expense of the environment and the living beings with which they share it.  Tycoonism means treating consumers as prey rather than important customers. Tycoonism views employees as a resource, a price of doing business, and a necessary evil, rather than as people and qualified professionals – instead, they’re a commodity to be gotten for the smallest possible amount, used hard, and then disposed of at the slightest hint of a downturn in profit growth. Sometimes, ironically, companies even sacrifice the quality that brought them to success to begin with. And that’s just for starters. There’s no end to the harm tycoonism can do in the hands of a big corporation.

It’s all done in the name of greed when mere success is no longer good enough. It’s prevalent. I challenge any American to go one month without being victimized in some way by tycoonism. Check your bills, your contracts, your employee file, your medical chart and your store receipts. This month some company, somewhere, stuck it to you somehow. I can guarantee it.

Because with tycoonism comes tycoonism’s tactics where companies strategize new and creative ways to take advantage of their customers and exploit their employees. These tactics are admired in the business community, and then shared to become part of the standard business model. The tactics are taught to middle managers who, ambitious, demonstrate them to gain favor with their bosses and to prove they deserve that promotion.

That’s right, when I refer to tycoonism, I’m not necessarily talking about a single individual at the head of a big corporation. Sure, that’s what we usually think of, and cartoon characters like Montgomery Burns of the Simpsons are based on the stereotype, but today it’s often (and perhaps more commonly) conference rooms full of middle managers trying to please their boss or earn a bonus that are the vehicle for the implementation of tycoonistic policies. After all, it’s easier to justify doing harm when doing so as part of a team, or a board, without having to feel the full weight of the responsibility, or the guilt, individually.

As I said in my introduction there are many businesses that reach and maintain success by traditional, or ethical, means. They should be admired and supported. They are the companies that prevent, if just barely, capitalism from becoming a bad word.

Tycoonism, on the other hand is perhaps the most harmful of phenomena to ever touch the human race – more harmful by far, than all the cancers and weapons of mass destruction combined.

Yet, tycoonism continues mostly unfettered.