Rhett Butler on the Corporate Board

Your average manufacturer has for a long time been forced to compete with countries which have no labor laws, environmental laws, OSHA laws, and pay slave wages; or even use slave labor. All this forced upon them by both political parties - long on platitudes and short on judgment or common sense.

One of the most grievous things now happening in the United States to manufacturers is a willingness by the federal government to import stupidity from overseas by way of treaty, or for local green governments to affect changes based on these ideas. Even when treaties are unratified, they still can have deadly consequences on industry because of the tendencies of U.S. bureaucracies to incorporate treaty language into regulations, or for American courts to use international treaties or foreign court decisions based on international treaties and make application of those decisions to American law; even when the United States isn't a signatory.

One such thing now being proposed is based on the idea of usufructuary property ownership. The term originated back in ancient Rome. The Caesars owned everything and they would designate certain people to be given the privilege to use certain property. Of course, the rights to the property lasted only so long as Caesar was alive, happy or not insane. It seems Caesar's alive and well today; however.

The usufrutuary property advocates today would divide the United States into zones based on the Biodiversity Treaty that no United States Senate in history would ratify. After set asides for government land, wildlife areas and buffer zones between wildlife areas and human habitation, industry's use would range from limited to annihilated.

One may wonder why any elected official would want such zones when surely business giants who contribute to election funding would oppose them. Would they? Those with access to the wheels of power get exemptions which competitors don't. That's why many wealthy corporations often support big government policies. ( Which would be needed to implement any usufructurary plan.)

Also large governments don't award large contracts to small companies. Large governments award large contracts to large companies. Large governments also implement costly regulations to justify their existence which hurt smaller business competitors of multinationals. Multinationals can skirt borders and thereby regulations; or relish fines or rules that they can afford (especially imposed after the fact) if it keeps companies without deep pockets out of the competition for contracts, or even puts them out of business.

Now, I am as capitalist as they get and admire people and businesses who are success stories. I'm also no conspiratorialist. There's an old saying, " Never attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by stupidity." And shortsightedness is the stupidity here.

Our shortsighted corporations are like Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell's immortal classic, “ Gone with the Wind," who said, “ There's as much money can be made from a civilization's destruction as from its rise.” So our problem is the Rhett Butlers on the corporate boards, many who are clueless about the damage they do to the country.

In this vain, with all respect to Bill Gates, a self-made man as ever was, it's not college degrees in the Arts that are hurting America. The Greeks and Romans at their height of power recognized the importance of music, history, art and literature in education. The problem is we graduate too many people without an education that includes real music, real history, real art and real literature as the subjects were once taught before the counter-culture. When our leaders achieved degrees with real Arts as subjects required, the nation was built.

By

Jeffrey Ruzicka

Jeffrey Ruzicka is a retired executive of a small company that specializes in industrial water treatment. He lives happily with his wife in Western Pennsylvania. He is a contributing writer to ManufacturingWorkers,ManufacturingWorkersBlog, and Nexxt.