Collective Sole

Noam Scheiber in the NYT (Gift Article) with an interesting take on Why Corporate America Is Caving to Trump. “Sheer terror undeniably plays an important role. But there appears to be a deeper explanation, too. Resisting government coercion is often a matter of collective action: Companies are much more likely to succeed if they stand together, rather than fight on their own. ‘It’s easy to pick off individual companies,’ Mark Mizruchi, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies large corporations, said in an interview. ‘But if they’re all coming after you as a single collective, you can’t — he’d tank the whole economy.’ Over the past few generations, however, the culture and ethos of the American business elite has changed. A once cohesive establishment has broken down, making collective action rarer and much harder to achieve. Competition among companies has become increasingly cutthroat. Chief executives are often more concerned with their share price than their company’s long-term health, much less any genteel sense of obligation to a vague greater good. The civic organizations that once bonded corporate leaders to one another have been hollowed out or disappeared altogether.” (This is one more reason why the pro democracy crowd is desperate for a leader. It’s not just that corporate America is divided and therefore easier to conquer. It’s that there is no powerful voice calling on them, or anyone else, to unify for the good of the country.)