It is the nature of any field to become more specialized and more focused over time. In Aristotle’s time, even during the Renaissance, it was possible for a very educated person to know all there was to know. That is no longer true. Every field of study has become more and more specialized as the tools with which it acquires knowledge yield ever-richer bounty – it simply takes more time to master even a sub-specialty today than it did to learn an entire body of knowledge in the past.
Business is no different. Over time, the business world has gotten more sophisticated and increasingly efficient at creating profit. But in so doing, it has eroded one of the pillars that maintained its integrity. Business has lost sight of the fact that it is a social institution. All institutions are social institutions – even science.
We are people. We create and maintain institutions because they are useful to us. Yes, even science. Even religion. When these institutions no longer serve our aims as a society then we get rid of them.
Business wants to have it both ways. It wants to carve out a social exemption for itself – it wants its profit-seeking mission to be held sacrosanct. It wants to be exempt from having to contribute to society. But it also wants to benefit from society.
You cannot have it both ways.
Actually, there’s only one way you can have this. You’re either a social institution or you will not exist. It really is that simple. Society will simply not accept in its midst an institution that consumes its resources (even if it is a net-positive producer of resources) yet does not advance the aims of society.
Business had better re-learn this lesson very quickly. In the past, businessmen were part of the community. In a very real way. Not simply in the sense that they wrote a nice check to whatever community organization they favored. But in the sense that business as an institution was seen as a building block of society – it was truly integrated into and among other social institutions.
It’s time to get back to this. Profit is not the only reason a business exists.
