Biznews community member Jan Hough sent the following email to publisher Alec Hogg:
You wrote the following:
“The crumbling facade of hierarchical corporation structures took another big hit this week. This time the unlikely David was Please Call Me SMS service inventor Kenneth Makate, victorious in South Africa’s Constitutional Court…d things will be done in misguided pursuance of corporate duty by otherwise honourable human beings. People are essentially good. But antiquated corporate structures incentivise them to sometimes do bad things. W…”
I think I know where you are coming from with these comments, but I do think your analysis is essentially false. I believe we are all essentially battling the evil within us. We mostly fail. Corporates essentially mirror the humans from whom they are formed, and if they are not carefully managed/controlled, the evil can be devastating to millions of people. e.g. Nazi regime, Bernie Madoff, etc. In other words, the scale of damage is so much larger with corporates, and it is much more difficult to get a ‘feel’ for whether they are trustworthy, compared to a person.
Do you disagree with this view?
Corporates (including politicians) thus need very careful oversight, more so that your average acquaintance. And I believe that you do this in an exemplary way.
Alec responded:
My belief that all people are essentially good comes from a mixture of my faith in a Higher Power which provides perspective of where we are in the universe; what I’ve experienced in my own and other lives; and my reading on the human condition from, particularly, Scott Peck. That combines to keep me optimistic – a belief that everyone begins with good intentions and is redeemable no matter how far they may have fallen.
