PREDATORY CAPITALISM: WHEN THE PUBLIC MUST SERVE THE BUSINESS

 PREDATORY CAPITALISM:

WHEN THE PUBLIC MUST SERVE THE BUSINESS 

I have been thinking about capitalism, not merely as an idea in a textbook, but as a pattern that repeats itself in real life, in communities, workplaces, stores, hospitals, online platforms, housing, food, and nearly every place where people must spend money to meet their needs.

The pattern often begins innocently enough.

Someone starts a business. Perhaps they have an idea, a skill, or a product people need. They may provide food, transportation, medicine, housing, communication, entertainment, or some other useful service. 

People become customers. The business grows. It hires workers. It becomes part of the local economy. It may even become something people depend on.

At that point, we are often told that this is success. But there is a moment, sometimes gradually sometimes obvious, when the purpose of the business begins to change. What began as a means of meeting human needs becomes an institution whose own survival, expansion, and profit are treated as more important than the people it was supposed to serve.

That is the point at which I begin to think of predatory capitalism.

A business should be a tool. It should exist because it provides something useful, treats people fairly, and contributes more to a community than it takes from it. But too often, the tool becomes the master. The business grows large enough that its continued existence is no longer questioned, even when it is harming customers, workers, or the community around it. The company becomes like a living creature that must keep feeding.

It needs more customers, more sales, more data, more labor, more debt, more consumption, more growth. It needs people to keep sending money into it. Yet the people supplying that money are no longer treated as human beings with needs, rights, and intelligence. They become numbers on a spreadsheet. They become “users,” “accounts,” “traffic,” “market share,” “labor costs,” or “consumer demand.”

The customer who was supposedly “king” becomes one sheep among millions.

As long as the money keeps coming in, the company may feel no obligation to listen. It may raise prices, lower quality, hide important information in fine print, make cancellation difficult, collect private data, provide worse service, or exploit people’s dependence on something they cannot easily live without. And when customers complain, the answer is often: You are free to go somewhere else.

But what if there is nowhere else to go?

What if the company has driven out smaller competitors? What if it is the only employer in town? What if it controls an essential service? What if a person cannot afford an alternative? What if the alternative is just another giant company behaving in nearly the same way? Then “choice” becomes a hollow word.

A person may technically be free to leave, but that does not mean they have real power. Telling someone they can walk away from an abusive or exploitative arrangement means very little when the system has been designed so that walking away leads to hunger, unemployment, debt, isolation, or the loss of basic necessities.

This is one of the most troubling tricks built into our present economic culture: people are taught that they are responsible for problems they do not have the power to solve alone.

If a company mistreats customers, we are told the customers should simply stop buying from it. If a company mistreats workers, we are told workers should simply quit. If a corporation pollutes a community, we are told residents should move. If the price of medicine, food, or housing becomes unbearable, we are told people should work harder, budget better, or make wiser choices.

But individual people do not have the same choices, resources, or power that corporations do.

A giant company can hire lawyers, lobbyists, public-relations firms, consultants, and political allies. It can move jobs, reshape markets, negotiate tax breaks, influence local officials, and spend millions of dollars protecting its image. An individual customer may have a complaint, a social-media post, or the ability to take their business elsewhere, if they are lucky enough to have another place to go.

That is not an equal relationship. It is not a free relationship. It is not a relationship in which the customer is king.

And then comes the emotional blackmail.

When people finally organize—when customers boycott, workers unionize, residents protest, journalists investigate, or citizens demand regulation, the company’s defenders often respond by accusing those people of wanting to destroy jobs.

This is where the story gets turned upside down. The same corporation that may underpay workers, cut benefits, outsource jobs, close plants, suppress unions, raise prices, and place profits above human lives suddenly claims to be the defender of working people. The public is told that demanding accountability is cruel because it might hurt employees.

But workers and customers are not enemies.

Workers are customers. Customers are workers. They are parents, neighbors, patients, elders, students, caregivers, and members of the same communities. They depend on one another. The people harmed by a company’s practices are often the very people blamed for challenging those practices.

The corporation benefits when working people are taught to fear one another.

It benefits when the customer is told, “Do not complain, or people will lose their jobs.” It benefits when the worker is told, “Do not organize, or the company will leave.” It benefits when the community is told, “Do not regulate us, or we will take our money elsewhere.” 

In each case, the threat is the same: accept the harm, accept the imbalance, accept that the business comes first, or suffer the consequences.

That is not freedom. That is dependence disguised as freedom.

A business that cannot survive without mistreating people does not have a moral right to continue in the same form. A company that can only remain profitable by exploiting its workers, deceiving its customers, poisoning its environment, or holding a community hostage is not an economic success. It is a warning sign.

We need to stop treating the existence of a company as sacred.

No business should be considered more important than the people whose labor built it, whose purchases sustained it, and whose purchases sustained it, and whose community made room for it. The fact that a company provides jobs does not give it permission to mistreat workers. The fact that a company provides a useful service does not give it permission to mistreat customers. The fact that a business is large, profitable, or politically connected does not make it beyond criticism.

Businesses are created by people. They are sustained by people. They should remain accountable to people. That means we need to ask different questions than the ones we are usually encouraged to ask. Not simply: How much money does it make?

But: Who benefits from that money? Who does the work? Who carries the risk? Who pays when something goes wrong? Who is harmed when the company cuts corners? Who has the power to object? Who gets heard? And who is told to be quiet because the company’s needs matter more than their own?

Those are the questions that reveal whether an institution is serving society or feeding on it.

Capitalism does not become predatory merely because a business makes a profit. People deserve to be paid for their work, creativity, skill, and risk. Local stores, independent makers, family businesses, and worker-owned enterprises can strengthen communities. Honest exchange can be useful and dignified.

The problem begins when profit becomes the only measure of value.

A healthy economy should recognize that human dignity, public health, fair wages, affordable necessities, environmental protection, and community stability all matter. If a company makes enormous profits while leaving workers exhausted, customers trapped, families indebted, neighborhoods damaged, and public institutions weakened, then something is deeply wrong—even if the company’s stock price is rising.

Growth is not always progress.

Size is not proof of virtue.

Profit is not the same thing as value.

And no institution should be allowed to become so powerful that the people it depends upon are no longer permitted to ask whether it deserves to exist as it does.

That is the pattern I see: a business begins by serving people, grows by relying on people, then becomes powerful enough to demand that people serve it.

It is like a snake eating its own tail. The more the institution consumes the well-being of the people around it, the more it weakens the very communities, workers, and customers it requires in order to survive. 

Yet instead of recognizing this contradiction, the system often asks those same people to sacrifice even more—to pay more, work harder, complain less, and be grateful for whatever is left. 

We can reject that story.

We can insist that people are not merely consumers, workers, or units of profit. We are human beings. We have the right to question institutions that affect our lives. We have the right to organize with one another. We have the right to demand that the economy serve the public rather than requiring the public to serve the economy.

A business is NOT a person. NO MATTER WHAT THE CORRUPT JUDGES OF THE SUPREME COURT SAY! 

It does not feel hunger, fear, grief, love, or pain.

People do. And that is why people must come first!

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