Butler D. Shaffer Quotes

Firms with established market positions wanted to reduce the impact of such competition and employed voluntary methods (such as mergers, pooling, trade association ‘codes of ethics,’ and other agreements) in efforts to stabilize competitive relationships. When such voluntary means failed due to lack of effective enforcement, influential corporate leaders, having found a condition of unrestrained competition and decision-making unacceptable to their interests, helped promote the enactment of legal restraints upon trade practices.

The 1920s are part of that critical period discussed by the historian James Gilbert in his study of the development of collectivist thinking, a phenomenon he relates to the emergence of ‘a new industrial civilization in which the giant business organization was the dominant force.’ As Gilbert has demonstrated, the architects of twentieth century American collectivism had patterned their ideas on the industrial corporation as the central organizational tool. Any form of collectivism is, after all, ‘conservative’ in nature, being premised on the establishment of static, rigidly structured social relationships designed to restrain any influences that would pose the threat of substantial change. A symbiotic relationship thus developed between the forces of "social reform" and those advocating the conservation of existing economic institutions and relationships. In twentieth-century ‘ liberalism, declared the historian James Weinstein, many business leaders saw ‘a means of securing the existing social order.’

The origins of any productive system seem to be traceable to conditions in which the self-interest driven purposes of individuals are allowed expression. These include the respect for autonomy and inviolability of personal boundaries that define liberty and peace and allow for cooperation for mutual ends. Support for such an environment has led to the flourishing of human activity not only in the production of material well-being, but in the arts, literature, philosophy, entrepreneurship, mathematics, spiritual inquiries, the sciences, medicine, engineering, invention, exploration, and other dimensions that fire the varied imaginations and energies of mankind.

There prevails a highly romanticized view of the small, independent retailer as the paladin for a system of free and open competition. An examination of the evidence, however, reveals few trades with a better track record than independent retailers at getting to the political arena with programs for depriving somebody of a competitive advantage. Virtually every innovation in retailing has met with the organized and vocal opposition of retailers who were unwilling to adjust their own selling methods to meet the competition, and who responded with legislative proposals to preserve the status quo.

During the years 1918-38, notions of economic autonomy and self-regulating market behavior confronted the forces of industrial concentration. Free competition-with attendant low prices and aggressive trade practices—was identified with the older, unstructured forms of organization characterized by smaller, self-governing business firms. An unrestrained marketplace brought with it the specter of incessant change, a condition that was unacceptable to those charged with the responsibilities of managing and preserving the assets and market positions of business organizations. In the confrontation between ‘individualism’ and ‘instituti6nalism,’ competition came to be identified with the decentralized, unstructured practices representing the past. Individual self-interest, with its decentralizing tendencies, had to be suppressed in favor of the emerging institutional order. The attack on autonomy was a defense of the new order: the institutionally dominant, centrally directed, collective society.

Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge ‘our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor’ not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us.

We delude ourselves with the beliefs that the establish order suffers from only from policy or style defects, and that the new leadership or legislation or organization reforms are sufficient to overcome any problems. We can tinker with the machinery, but dare not think of doing without it. We may be willing to believe that the emperor is naked, but certainly not the empire itself.

Is an alleged ‘common good’ intended to convey the idea of a universal good, one that is applicable to everyone? If so, the only value I have found to which all persons would seem to subscribe, is this: no one wants to be victimized. I have yet to find an individual to which this proposition would not apply. No one chooses to have his or her person or other property interests trespassed upon by another. The failure to recognize both this fact and the fact that all of our values are subjective in nature, has given rise to the silly notion of altruism, the idea that one could choose to act contrary to his or her perceived interests.

To Toto fell the task of exposing the humbuggery that manipulated both the institutional machinery and followers. Because he did not share his companions’ trembling reverence for established wizardry, this free-spirited, tagalong mutt was able to approach the screen that separated the leaders from the followers. In knocking over that screen, however, Toto did far more than simply reveal the systematic bamboozlement of the Ozians. He also made it possible for his companions to discover that the personal qualities they had labored to earn as institutionally-bestowed rewards, were qualities that had always been within themselves. In believing that the virtues they sought lay outside themselves, and that some institutional alchemy could convert their leaden instincts to golden conduct (to paraphrase Herbert Spencer), they had set themselves up to be manipulated and exploited for the benefit of institutional interests.

The history of institutionalized society has been principally one of the organization and management of conflict. Do institutions not encourage the duality in our thinking that promotes the practices of projecting good and bad characteristics onto others? Do they not encourage and exploit both scapegoating and authority worship, continually reminding us of the presence of some object of fear or hared, or some other source of conflict, and consoling us that they, alone, can make our lives secure?