Why I hate Michael J. Fox……………………………

Because he played a character called Alex P. Keaton  on a sitcom called Family Ties in the early 80’s. Keaton, a fictional character, represented Ronald Reagan’s America.  A land favored by the Creator that looked like a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting.  A country abound with opportunities.  If you couldn’t make it on your own there was no room for you.

"The Alex Keaton generation was rejecting the counterculture of the 1960s and embracing the wealth and power that came to define the '80s."

Over the last 30 years this Keatonesque mindset has led us to worship big business and the CEO’s who run them.  You can’t go very far without seeing the faces of CEOs plastered across magazine covers – leaning up against their desks with their sleeves rolled up like they just hard working stiffs.  Guys like Dick Fuld who led Lehman into the business of subprime mortgages. Stan O’Neal who guided Merrill Lynch's from fee businesses like asset management into creating collateralized debt obligations, which were largely made of subprime mortgage bonds. And let’s not forget Dennis “Mr.$15,000 dog-shaped umbrella stand” Kozlowski CEO of Tyco International, convicted in 2005 of crimes related to his receipt of $81 million in purportedly unauthorized bonuses, the purchase of art for $14.725 million and the payment by Tyco of a $20 million investment banking fee to a former Tyco director.

Much like a lot of politicians who long for the good old days in the U.S of A,  I too long for the good old days.  Not the ones they do - when America had “values” – never mind there were Jim Crow laws in effect and that we’ve needed at least three waves of feminism to get y’all up to second class citizens.  I long for different set of good old days.

Days when we didn’t worship the Captains of Industry and the businesses they ran – I miss when we viewed business and those who ran them with a bit more of a  jaded eye.  To recall what U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson (1934) called the economic princes of his day - Robber Barons.

President Theodore Roosevelt spoke of the "malefactors of great wealth" and embraced a public, political role for the government in "anti-trust": controlling, curbing, and breaking up large private concentrations of economic power.

With this jaded eye legislation was passed to protect the consumer – like  the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation to prevent bankers from turning our economy into a giant gambling casino for the super rich – as they had done in the 1920’s.   In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the U.S. government struggled with anti-competitive practices between businesses. Part of the concern was related to artificial pricing practices that harmed consumers. In response to these monopolies, cartels, and trusts, Congress passed two major pieces of legislation:  The Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Act.   I am not advocating a reenactment of one hundred year old laws but I am trying to remind us of a day when we didn’t trust big business to take care of the average American.  

I am asking us to hold companies to a higher standard than just optimizing corporate profits and increasing stock prices – we should be expecting, no - demanding them to demonstrate corporate social responsibility .

“(CSR, also called corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, social performance, or sustainable responsible business)[1] is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, CSR-focused businesses would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. CSR is the deliberate inclusion of PI into corporate decision-making, that is the core business of the company or firm, and the honoring of a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit.” 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility

Until we can get companies to demonstrate CSR – I would like to keep the concept of robber barons alive.

So let’s take a moment to remember those great captains of industry who were described by Josephson for their most ruthless actions, their plunders and conspiracies, and their lack of ethics. The system they created led to the Great Depression. 

And maybe just maybe if we could hold companies accountable and they were able to embrace their social responsibilities I just might be able to forgive Michael - I hear he is a nice guy.  I am sure knowing what we know now and given another chance he would have turned Alex P. Keaton into a tree hugging, progressive like me ;)

     John Jacob Astor (real estate, fur)—New York City

    Andrew Carnegie (steel)—Pittsburgh and New York

    Jay Cooke (finance)—Philadelphia

    Charles Crocker (railroads)—California

    Daniel Drew (finance)—New York

    James Buchanan Duke (tobacco)— Durham, North Carolina

    James Fisk (finance)—New York

    Henry Morrison Flagler (railroads, oil)—New York, Florida

    Henry Clay Frick (steel)—Pittsburgh and New York City

    John Warne Gates (barbed wire)

    Jay Gould (railroads)--New York

    Edward Henry Harriman (railroads)—New York

    Mark Hopkins (railroads)—California

    Andrew W. Mellon (finance, oil)—Pittsburgh

    J. P. Morgan (finance, industrial consolidation)—New York City

    Henry B. Plant (railroads)—Florida

    John D. Rockefeller (oil), Cleveland, New York

    Charles M. Schwab (steel) Pittsburgh and New York

    John D. Spreckels (sugar)— California

    Leland Stanford (railroads)—California

    Joseph Seligman (banking)

    Cornelius Vanderbilt (water transport, railroads)--New York

    Charles Tyson Yerkes (street railroads)--Chicago