The Business of America is Honest Competition

...Telling us why you told those ladies you didn't intend to resign, and why, in the vernacular of my daughter, you copped a plea three days later...

...No one, then, has a stronger motive for stamping out unethical practices than the honest businessman, whether he runs the corner drugstore or a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate...

...Their systems do not work as well as free enterprise, but, like all religious devotees, they are willing to suffer and sacrifice for their beliefs...

...Just as you cannot maintain a home or a healthy society without a strong degree of shared respect and common values, you cannot maintain a healthy market without a strong degree of trust and a shared code of ethics (whether stated or implicit) among the participants...

...This can be done very effectively, but not until American capitalism does some soul-searchingand internal housecleaning of its own, until the business community becomes as concerned about corruption, bribes, and the need for ethical behavior as it is about turning a profit...

...what kind of job you have...

...Louis, a pre-medical student stood on his head on the wings of a hi-plane...

...And just as every American citizen bears the awesome burden of meeting his civic obligations in a way that will preserve his heritage of political liberty for his children, so every American businessman has a sacred duty to maintain a standard of behavior and a reputation for integrity that will preserve our economic liberties for generations of Americans yet unborn...

...One of the best ways to teach the pros and cons of any system is to compare it with the available alternatives...

...Counterfeit Capitalists For the whole point of free enterprise--of capitalism--is vigorous, honest competition...

...Sincerely, Vic Gold Wilkam E. Simon The Business of America is Honest Competition Businessmen who cheat or bribe are not only contemptible...

...It is only through a shared moral foundation--a set of binding ground rules for fair conduct--that free associations, be they social, diplomatic, or commercial, can flourish and endure...

...Quite the contrary...

...The latter group is every bit as contemptible as the poacher who slaughters endangered species to sell a few fur coats, or the exploiter who plunders forests or destroys the environment for short-term returns ot unacceptable long-term cost to us and to posterity...

...Give it to us straight, Pathfinder--the way you always said you would...

...On these clear-cut, practical grounds, business corruption is inefficient and business ethics are efficient...

...It results in higher prices, lessened responsiveness to the consumer, and lower quality of goods and services...

...And when this happens, and the call for more government interference goes up, the innocent majority of businessmen suffer along with the guilty minority...

...Today, when considering the merits of the free-enterprise system, most Americans simply do not have a valid standard for comparison...

...Rigorous business ethics may be commendable from a moral point of view, they will tell you, but honesty interferes with the rough-and-tumble competition of the free market...

...what books you can read...

...There are also overwhelming moral grounds for a strong business ethic...

...But today it is losing the semantic war to an alien philosophy of government control that somehow has managed to preserve an aura of idealism, altruism, and ethical soundness, at least when viewed without detailed knowledge and from a comfortable distance...

...instead it must turn to American farmers who own their own land, make their own economic decisions, and feed not only their own people, but millions of others as well...

...Any objective evaluation of economic performance clearly illustrates the United States' superior record in both economic output and the equitable distribution of economic benefits...

...Which makes me all the more convinced that the fork-tongued, fuzzy-minded guy writing and popping off on the tube is a ringer...

...A good reputation," the old Roman proverb has it, "is more valuable than money...

...We must get across the human side of capitalism, the fact that free enterprise has been and continues to be a force for human good and, in its correct application, an extension of our Judeo-Christian spiritual and ethical tradition...

...Before we can explain the ethic of capitalism to the general public, we must be clear in our own minds about it...

...But businessmen should never rationalize unethical conduct, whether overseas or at home...

...They have never asked themselves why a country like the Soviet Union, with some of the largest, richest tracts of grainland in the world, but with a government-owned and -run agricultural system, cannot even feed its own people...

...As the major spokesman within the Administration for those who opposed a financial bail-out, I received repeated calls from many major business and investment executives congratulating me on my stand and urging me to "hang in there...

...What the private sector requires today is leaders who have deep convictions and will stand up for them...

...Among other things, this means we should be the first to denounce the few rotten apples in our midst...

...Gutless Wonders As long as many of America's executive suites house gutless wonders who crave anonymity and are deathly afraid of "rocking the boat," the boat is going to keep on leaking and slowly sinking...

...The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us," Thomas Jefferson once wrote, and this truth certainly applies to the American business community today...

...History teaches us that no free society or free economy can long survive without an ethical base...

...And, of course, they have never lived in the countries where the seemingly unselfish and idealistic dream of a non-profit, propertyless society has turned into a nightmare reality--where the state and the state alone dictates what kind of education you will receive...

...The media gave it their all...

...They do not realize what a miracle of variety, economy, and productive competition the average American shopping center would represent to most of the earth's people...

...The Great American Flag Company in New York hoisted a stars and stripes on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that was three times the .James Ring Adams is on the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal...

...The revelation of this unethical conduct not only severely injured Lockheed's standing, but also greatly damaged America's international prestige and further weakened public confidence in all corporations--the innocent along with the guilty...

...Bribery, of course, is a two-way street, involving those who seek as well as those who offer bribes...

...They also attack the very heart of our free-enterprzse system...

...Fortunately, not everyone is heading for cover...

...Baloney...

...Now, frankly, Pathfinder, what the kid said there has a certain inner logic...

...For all the foolishness, the spectacle gave as accurate an account as we are likely to get of the current state of the American spirit, and it was by no means something to be ashamed of...

...Instead of automatically weakening their faith, adversity may even fortify it as long as they believe and as long as they feel that their belief is anchored to something of moral worth...

...we must really believe in it and we must show that we really practice what we preach...

...whether you will be allowed to travel...

...Too often they have been taught to distrust the very word profit, and the profit motive that makes our prosperity possible, to feel that our system, which has done more to alleviate human suffering and privation than any other, is somehow cynical, selfish, and immoral...

...The continuous struggle within capitalist ranks has always been between those enlightened businessmen who recognize this ethical but also utilitarian basis for sustained prosperity and those who lose sight of it in pursuit of the quick killing...

...American free enterprise has consistently outperformed Marxism and socialism from the beginning, and continues to do so today...

...In our era, when the main political struggle is between controlled societies and free ones (and, on the economic front, between controlled economies and free ones), nothing is more vital to the survival of our economic way of life than a rigorous free-enterprise ethic and business leaders with the courage and energy to stand up for it...

...About 500 miles northeast of Bermuda, a man named Karl Thompson, trying to accomplish one of the last great unachieved feats, a free balloon crossing of the Atlantic, had to leap from his craft, the Spirit of '76, and was rescued after four days in a liferaft by a Russian freighter...

...Channel 13, New York's public television station, rebroadcast all 13 episodes of"Flash Gordon: Space Soldier" from midnight July 3rd to four a.m., and Walter Cronkite stayed on the air until the following midnight with national coverage of everything from hymns to fireworks...

...The institutional cowardice of much of the private-sector hierarchy was painfully illustrated to me during the political battle over New York City...

...Be Done with Babble Businessmen can babble about the free-enterprise system until they are blue in the face, but it still won't mean anything to those who do not understand the system behind the label, or those who have come to distrust the advocates of the system...

...I said then, and I reemphasize now, that both government and the other members of the corporate community should unite in unequivocally condemning illegal or unethical activities by American businesses, whether at home or abroad...

...Such people are counterfeit capitalists, outlaws within the fold...

...At a time when it was benefitting from a government-guaranteed loan of $250 million provided by a consortium of American banks, Lockheed had been secretly paying out millions of dollars in graft to foreign officials...

...This article is adapted from an essay in The Ethical Basis of Economic Freedom, a 428-page book edited by Ivan Hill, and available for $12 50from Amenican Viewpoint, University Square, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514...

...Nearly everyone insisted on calling the day "America's 200th Birthday Party," thus assimilating the event to the cultural level of a 10-year-old...

...The most spectacular and dignified of the Bicentennial events, this endeavor brought sixteen large square-rigged sailing vessels, some two-thirds of the last operating "tall ships" in the world, to New York harbor, along with I4 The Alternative: An American Spectator October I976...

...Garish and understated, banal and uplifting, ridiculous and dignified, irrelevant and thoroughly appropriate...

...who will condemn the minority of corruptors in their midst instead of making excuses for them...

...Nevertheless, American free enterprise today is in serious danger of failing as a belief...

...Their economic philosophy is deliberately linked to a general philosophy of life, for, to the "true believer," socialism and Marxism are not merely economic formulas, but allembracing world views--kinds of temporal religion...

...Entrepreneurs in Baltimore baked the world's largest cake, 69,000 pounds in all, but could only sell 20,000 of its estimated 400,000 slices...

...First-things-first...

...As Benjamin Franklin once observed, " I f the rascals knew the advantages of virtue, they would become honest men out of rascality...

...Frequently, and especially to youthful idealists, those who support a state-dominated economic system are perceived as concerned, socially progressive men and women who " c a r e " - - a s the humane champions of the underdog...

...size of the largest flag reported by Guinness and watched in horror as the wind promptly ripped it in tatters...

...Americans celebrated in the strangest ways...

...The kind we used to admire you for back in the good old days...

...This can be achieved through education but, so far, it has not been...

...and, ultimately, where you will be buried...

...Even more than the political sector, business desperately needs leaders who are statesmen of courage and principle...

...who will stop asking for government tariffs and subsidies as a substitute for good management...

...They have not had to suffer the loss of opportunity, the social unrest, and the economic instability of democratic countries like Italy, which has chosen to nationalize 47 percent of its industries, or Great Britain, where the post-war years of cradle-to-grave welfare and government stifling of private initiative have led to economic stagnation and the demoralization and mass emigration of the productive middle class...

...So one of our challenges is education--education of the public at large and greater self-understanding within the business community itself...

...what your children will be taught...

...Corruption, whether it involves bribes to secure overseas government contracts, illegal contributions to political candidates here at home, or any other form of graft or payola, hampers the efficient functioning of the market place...

...They have never witnessed the long lines of workers and housewives who have to queue up for hours outside state-owned food and department stores in order to buy a poor selection of overpriced food staples and state-manufactured clothing and merchandise...

...And by all means, do something about that Red-lining,: UN-loving charlatan who's trying to raise money from honest conservatives through his phoney, pro-Arab front, Education foe Democracy...

...But whenever I asked these summer soldiers to express their views in public testimony they ran like rabbits, spouting a thousand and one excuses for their cowardice, all of which added up to one: rather than risk temporary financial losses or a brief flurry of media criticism, they chose to turn their backs on their beliefs, and on those who dared to defend them in public...

...And, often enough, they really are the only ones who have effectively communicated their concern for social issues...

...Part, but not all, of the problem is a matter of image...

...talism retains is its reputation for providing honest value for money--in short, its good name...

...If we are to regain and hold public understanding and esteem, we, not those who would destroy the capitalist system, must lead the way in wiping out abuses committed in its name...

...No one is more aware of this than the opponents of free I~llzam E. Stmon zX Secretary of the Treasury...

...In St...

...In the long run, honesty is not only the best business policy, but the only one compatible with the free market and open competition...

...what medical treatment you will receive...

...In his recently published memoirs, Mr...

...Yet, through their own blind complacency many honest businessmen still either ignore the problem or respond to it with shallow cliches...

...His wife Laurel Ann Adams, making her first appearance in these pages, is a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine...

...This thought was uppermost in my mind when I testified on Capitol Hill in August 1975 concerning the revelation of widespread foreign bribery by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation...

...In January 1976, A. W. Clausen, the president of Bank of America, blasted The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976 13 the "ethical blindness" of some American corporations and called for "strong and specific measures" to strengthen and cleanse the private sector from within...

...And all the more anxious that, wherever you are, the real Spiro Agnew will be heard from soon...

...If he isn't interested in answering questions about his own integrity, why should anybody listen to him on any other issue...

...If apologists for corporate corruption are to be taken at their word, dishonesty is the best policy...

...yet, if our system is to survive, our people must have a basis for comparison on both material and moral grounds...

...The ethical and philosophic underpinnings of capitalism have not been thought out, articulated, and then disseminated to the millions of average citizens who enjoy the direct material benefits and the indirect spiritual and political benefits our system provides...

...Copyright American Viewpoint, Inc...

...Stanley Marcus of Nieman-Marcus expressed the same thought another way: "There is never a good sale for Nieman-Marcus unless it's a good buy for the customer...

...enterprise...

...Irving Shapiro, chairman of the board of DuPont, advocates a new, uniform code of ethics to which all large corporations would subscribe, an admirable goal, even if it is unlikely to be achieved in the immediate future...

...The ethical businessman, according to advocates of corporate corner-cutting, is at an automatic competitive disadvantage...

...Advocates of a state-controlled economy, whether they are Communists, fascists, or democratic socialists, base their own position on an ethical view, though a mistaken one...

...Most Americans never have been and, let us hope, never will be forced to experience first-hand what it means to live in a country where economic freedom has been destroyed or severely limited...

...Both the legal and medical professions have long since recognized the need to ostracize peers who abuse their professional trust and thereby damage the standing of all of their colleagues...

...where you will live...

...Every corner cut, every bribe placed, every little cheating move by a businessman in pursuit of quick plunder instead of honest profit, is an outright attack on the free-enterprise system...

...In such a climate, developing and articulating a strong, clear American business ethic has become absolutely necessary to the survival of free enterprise...

...James Ring Adams and Laurel Ann Adams The Great American Birthday Party For all their foolishness, our Fourth-of-July celebrations gave as accurate an account as we are likely to get of the current state of the American spirit, and it was by no means something to be ashamed of What kind of Bicentennial was it...

...what merchandise you can buy with your earnings...

...Those of us on the side of economic freedom are not so fortunate...

...The free-enterprise system denies us none of these personal decisions...

...it is high time that American businessmen did as much...

...Each new case of corporate graft, every new business scandal, further blackens the already tarnished image of American business...

...and who will seek out the public limelight to state the case for ethical capitalism, instead of cowering in the shadows while the system comes under ever heavier attack...

...Internationally, the United States government can help, and has already begun to do so, by working through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris for the adoption of an international code of ethics that could help curb bribery...

...To make matters worse, surface appearances often tend to confirm this impression, wrong though it is...

...It is the private sector which ultimately supplies ' new jobs and creates the material means for raising living stavdards, but the private sector seldom receives (and hardly ever demonstrates its claim to) credit from the man in the street...

...They are modern Vandals who, unchecked, could damage or destroy a brilliant but delicate market system that has taken thousands of years to evolve...

...At a time when the business community has been shorn of most of its traditional political leverage, in the face of a new public mood of angry questioning, and in a political atmosphere in which it is all too tempting for demagogues to blame American business for the economic and social problems we face, the most valuable asset American capi...

...Consider "Operation Sail...

...It is therefore unacceptable on both moral and practical grounds...

...Supporters of free enterprise are dismissed either as outdated theorists or as selfish opportunists concerned only with personal gain and preserving the status 12 The Akcrnative: An American Spectator Octoher 197( quo...

...what you will be paid...

...So the first part of the challenge for American capitalism is clear...

...Across the country, flagpole sitters and businessmen tried to break world records...

...Business corruption is an arbitrary restraint on open, honest competition...

...business ethics are a luxury, if not a liability...