The essence of business is pragmatism. But that pragmatism inevitably slides into cynicism.

Pragmatism means accepting the world at face value. Business involves people, materials, and production.

“Materials” comes from nature.

Pragmatism means ignoring any aspects of nature except its usefulness to people. That generally means dismantling for its parts, to be fed into the production machine.

Cynicism means that, even if the land and its inhabitants are intrinsically meaningful, and valued by people, they cannot generate maximum profits, and must be sacrificed.

People include both customers and employees (workers and management).

Pragmatism means ignoring the intrinsic value of human nature and spirit and potential for flourishing. It means treating people like atoms of functionality—mechanical components—which are combined into a processing machine.

Cynicism means that we use people up until they are destroyed. It means we abuse and manipulate them, to extract the most value, for the least investment, the least cost, the lowest wages or salaries, the least benefits. It means ignoring the people are also members of families, and communities; even that they are the customers  our businesses sell to.

Pragmatism means giving customers what they want, even if it might not be good for them. Cynicism means we sell people what we have, regardless of what they need. If customers don’t want what we have, we have to persuade them otherwise. We feed them propaganda until they believe they need our product to survive, and ascend the ladder of social status.

Cynicism means selling addictive substances as amusement, convenience, or self-medication. It means encouraging obsessive, compulsive, and pathological thoughts and behaviours, destructive to them and their societies.

Business does not have a monopoly on cynicism. Culture itself is often cynical. Cultures require varying degrees of sacrifice from their members, to prove their loyalty and commitment. Young people intuitively imitate adults, including their bad habits and destructive behaviours. Adults often encourage them.

Societies are inherently competitive. Surplus and rewards are unequally distributed. Maybe that’s because people unequally contribute. Maybe it’s because life is inherently unfair. Maybe it’s simply the recurrence of unequal distribution—both unqual contribution, and inherent unfairness—in the past.

People want more. They want more material wealth, because it improves the survival chances of their young. But so does the relative prosperity of their society. These two strategies are in tension. If one is over-privileged, the other suffers, and the total survival odds are reduced.

But few individuals even think to make such calculations. It’s probably that such calculations aren’t even possible, as they involve complex systems which cannot be reduced to mathematical formulas.

Some would prefer that we listen more to our empathy and instinct for compassion. But these are unreliable, especially in large societies composed of millions of strangers.

Compassion is a derived variable. It is affected by countless other variables, including the amount of compassion which was expressed in the past, and the amount of hardship experienced in the moment, and expected in the future. It is affected by our ability to recognize the humanity in strangers, which depends on how much they demonstrate their commitment to our cultural values. Radically different cultures rarely see one another as human beings, which is why it is so easy to go to war (even if it’s not that easy, because it requires a great sacrifice of lives).

Business does not exist to be compassionate. It exists to be selfish, within socially acceptable limits. But it regularly exceeds those limits. When it does, it works hard to justify, rationalize, obfuscate and externalize harms.

Pragmatic self-interest is the permitted domain of business. But business does not only attract the pragmatic. It also attracts the cynical, the pathological, the ideological, the narcissistic, the nihilistic, and the psychopathic.

As a society, we don’t really know how to cope with psychopaths. Mostly we try to tame them. The mildly cynical use psychopaths to launder their guilt and protect their reputations; to delegate immoral behaviour to others who more willing to get their hands dirty, and the desperate. Managers delegate to employees. CEOs delegate to vice presidents. Board members delegate to CEOs. Investors delegate to board members. As in other hierarchies. But we are all psychopaths of a sort, because we all dehumanimze strangers. It’s mostly a matter of degree.

One way to limit the damage of psychopaths is to reduce the size of hierarchies, so leaders are less isolated and insulated, behaviour of the members is less anonymous, and guilt for harms is less diffuse. When a large organization does harm, there is often no single individual to blame. This makes harmful behaviour more likely, because it is either not punished, or the punishment is too mild, and too diffuse, to be felt. It is merely the cost of doing business.

The market is meant to inspire competition. Competition inspires innovation. Innovation produces efficiency. Efficiency means we get more return on our investment. The value of energy and materials are maximized. But is that true? When we no longer no what value means? When value measures our ability to keep more people confused and addicted?

If you only look at the way business functions internally, then you can ignore how it functions externally, as an agent within society. If you ignore society, then you can ignore the impacts of that business on society, and consider only its profitability, and its contribution to GDP.

Why is GDP still our primary means of assessing the success of a society? Why is profitability the primary means of measuring the success of a business? What do we really want from life? Do we even know?