How do college
presidents and other public and private administrators contribute to the wealth
of the top of the private sector? By
failing to lead, failing to step up and oppose the defunding of education, or a
city, or a county, or healthcare, or aid to single mothers, or elder care,…
etc. These structures are not strapped
for cash because there is no cash, but because the cash is going more and more
into the pockets of the rich, virtually unopposed by our leaders. Coming from a different angle, when an
administrator you know steps up and takes a leadership role, it is shocking,
and usually makes the news.
Unfortunately, this is a rare occurrence and is considered foolhardy by
his/her brethren who long to move into the commissar class. There is a good
chance that the administrator you know who behaved in this fashion is no longer
an administrator today.
What are these administrators up against while they are
eying those keys in ignitions? Certainly their foe is a strong one, but
nonetheless it is the responsibility of our leaders to promote the general
welfare of the people. Certainly the forces arrayed distract them from this
responsibility are organized and extremely persistent; greed as a tool of the
powerful has been with us from the beginning.
Like an airborne virus, it can randomly affect any of us; it is also
concentrated in what we recognize as the community of ultra-rich. Don’t be fooled by corporate philanthropy, as
it is just a tiny fraction of the spoils, designed to place a fog around the
truth. With the current structure of incentives and promotions (the path to the
top), refusing the keys in the ignition will doom the administrator to a low
level position in the hierarchy of power, or more likely reject him or her
entirely. If you find someone of Bill
Gates’ stature, who got to that level of riches by a different model, rest
assured that you have found an anomaly.
How do we help them make more equitable decisions – “to promote the general welfare”? First we bring that old gem back from its
grave out into the light of day. Most
people don’t know that this concept is encoded in the preamble of our
constitution, yep - it was an original tenet of the document. If it was good enough for Madison , it should be good enough for our
bosses (and us). Presently that is not a
criterion for the mark of a good administrator public or private; rather our
administrators get promoted by ignoring the general welfare and promoting the
welfare of the few. This is because they
see no other alternative and indeed, all choices that lead upward in the
hierarchy look like keys in ignitions.
The situation is how it is now because of the careful manipulation of
the corporate model by those at the top to benefit themselves. We have the
power, through elected officials, through the voting box, and through push back
to corporations, to change the culture of success. It is a tall order, but it needs to be done. The first step to help our administrators not
go bad is to correct the corporate model.
Great reform is necessary. We the
people used to dictate to corporations, but now that is reversed. No
sweeping reform will ever be possible when corporations are given the status of
personhood, effectively creating “super” people who game the system. After reform, company charters, laws, etc.
can be changed to create a corporate culture of promoting the general welfare
of the people.
Lastly, I am not naïve enough to believe this tenet has ever
been realized in the United States of America
or perhaps anywhere else in the world.
However, our constitution and our democracy both enable us to change the
game and take away our excuses. We can
continue to let good administrators go bad or we can remove the keys and thus
the temptation and move forward towards providing the best for all the people!
