Big Business BAAAAD!

Another assumption that people almost always make is that big businesses are out to screw the "common man" and will find every opportunity to take advantage of poor, defenseless consumers. It doesn't matter what they do, it can always be rationalized as an attempt to exploit innocent people who toil away under the crushing thumb of big businesses.

Do big businesses do bad things? Absobloominutely. Of course there are businesses and CEOs and executives who are unethical and exploitive. But is that sufficient evidence against big businesses? Suppose I tell you that John earns $160 in tips every night at the Mojican Grill. Will you consider John to be a superstar? Will you jump to the conclusion that John must be doing something extraordinarily well to be able to earn such excessive tips? Not if you find out that the average waiter at this fancy restaurant makes $450 in tips.

Anyone who has taken a class in logic will realize the flaw in highlighting criminal CEOs who have been caught cheating as evidence that all CEOs are crooks. WHile this may be true, you'd have to show that CEOs of large companies are more likely to do crooked things than the average person or even the average small business owner. My problem is that without looking for such evidence, the media do their part in highlighting stories of CEOs gone bad that reinforce the stereotype. This can be very powerful when you're trying to appeal to an audience that wants to believe the stereotype. It makes you feel so much better that you're so good and honorable while those slime ball CEOs rip people off and earn millions.

What brought this thought on was reading a recent USA Today story on how a Coca-Cola secretary was sentenced to 8 years in prison for trying to sell Coke trade secrets to rival Pepsi. She stole some secret new-product samples and confidential documents and tried to sell them to Pepsi. Terrible, huh?

One sentence in the article reveals an interesting sidebar to the story. How did this woman get caught? Well, when Pepsi was approached with these secret formulas and confidential documents, they contacted Coke and warned them that they had been offered trade secrets. Get that? Instead of buying the documents or even ignoring it, they called their intensely competitive rival and told them that someone was trying to steal their stuff. Why wasn't this aspect of the story highlighted? Why wasn't more made about the incredibly ethical response on the part of Pepsi? Why wasn't this given as much press as some sleazy CEO being led out of his billion dollar estate in handcuffs? Because that's not what you want to hear. It wouldn't give you the comfort of knowing how superior you are to those "big business" executives who all ought to be locked up!