Rebuilding Broken Systems

CHAPTER 5The Business of Business Is (Not Just) Business

I could be wrong that as part of the money culture of this city and region, not understanding that you have to spend it to make it. And so too often things are done on the cheap and you just wouldn’t do it that way if you were in doing it like a business and trying to maximize the moving of metrics … For example, the corporate sector who needs consumers and employees should be investing much more in that ecosystem because out of that ecosystem comes both consumers and employees, but that seems to happen at the late end in a reactionary way.”

—Walter Lanier, President and CEO, Great Lakes Urban Empowerment Solutions

By any measure, the US economy is by far the largest, most robust, and powerful in the world.¹

Capitalism has proven to be a major contributing factor to the growth, wealth, and stability of the United States since declaring its independence from Great Britain in the eighteenth century. It’s not surprising that over time the role of business in America has been the subject of discussion, debate, and very divergent opinions. In this chapter we’ll explore how our economy has changed over time, some of the resultant twentieth-century attitudes toward business, and how our expectations for acceptable or praiseworthy corporate behavior continue to evolve in the twenty-first century. These shifting beliefs have not only had an impact on how business is conducted but have also had a profound effect on all of us, ...