The Righteousness of Failure
I watched a screener last night that my wife gets as a member of the SAG/AFTRA Nominating Committee. It’s the movie called Dark Waters starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway and I have been seeing trailers of it lately, so I was anxious to see it. It comes nineteen years after Erin Brockovich showed the world the power of class action suits against corporate polluters. This excellent new movie has a somewhat different message. Julia Roberts and Albert Finney won their suit in the 2000 film, but Mark Ruffalo, while ultimately prevailing for his injured clients, actually fails by most legal standards because DuPont manages to end-run him over and over. Ruffalo’s character used to represent chemical companies like DuPont, so he knows the depths of their pockets when they need to win at all costs so as to protect their corporate coffers. There is a line at a crucial point in the film when Hathaway says to Ruffalo’s boss Tim Robbins (while Ruffalo is hospitalized for a stress-related seizure), referring to Ruffalo’s efforts on behalf of his clients, “We don’t know what it is, but it’s not failure!” She was referring to his work protecting the interests of the working people of West Virginia as he protects them from PFOA C-8, a hugely harmful flourish-carbon chain chemical found in Teflon.
It’s hard to say that DuPont has been beaten in the end since the settlements they had to pay numbered in the hundreds of millions against the billion+ in annual Teflon profits. The credit scroll at the end of the movie reminds us that 99% of the humans on earth now have at least trace amounts of C-8 in their body chemistry and that it is likely to never go away. In other words, DuPont, for the sake of non-stick cookware, has indelibly changed the human race and perhaps positioned the essence of its demise (given all the harmful effects C-8 can bring about). To put a fine point on it, DuPont is still a $50 billion market capitalization company. It turns out that’s the value of human existence. That is somewhat melodramatic since no one ever thought C-8 would have such devastating effects, but maybe they should have.
I wish we could say that DuPont is the only company that has harmed humankind, but we all know better. The highest value companies in the world seem to be those that contribute to the acceleration of the demise of the species, right? According to Google the top global companies in value are:
Apple – $754 billion.
Alphabet (Google) – $579 billion.
Microsoft – $509 billion.
Amazon – $423 billion.
Berkshire Hathaway – $411 billion.
Facebook – $411 billion.
Exxon Mobil – $340 billion.
Johnson & Johnson – $338 billion.
This list forces me to rephrase my comments. Today’s biggest companies may be tomorrow’s biggest problems for the species. In 2000, the ten biggest companies included seven banks (four or which were Chinese) joined by Apple, Exxon, and Toyota. The exception to my problematic comment may be Apple, Google and perhaps J&J, all of which are largely considered more purveyors of improvements for mankind than the opposite. Good and bad, success and failure, seem to have fine lines that become fluid and moveable with the passage of time and as more knowledge accumulates about societal harm.
This makes me think about the Hippocratic Oath taken by medical professionals. The most memorable part of that is “Primum non nocere” or, “first, do no harm”. This should be the standard we all live by and to which all companies should adhere. By that standard, most companies from Coca Cola to Exxon to DuPont to Facebook may have failed at their primal mission if they are to be held to the same standard as physicians.
Back in the days of college, when I was divining my path forward, I was inclined to follow in the footsteps of my mother and go into global development work. I studied development economics and third world government. It seemed to be a noble path though one that was increasingly feeling overgrown as the 1970’s progressed. Somewhere in late 1974 and early 1975, I modified my path and switched to business, which specifically led to business school and then banking. When I sought the counsel of my mother, who had put forty years into development work around the world, her advice was to say that the only way business would become more righteous would be if well-intentioned people like me chose to pursue it as their path. This was her giving me her blessing to walk that road. While I could debate all day how righteously I impacted mankind in my professional life, I would absolutely suggest that I did no harm, either at the human level or the broader professional level. Even my days of reclaiming debt to Latin American countries took a decidedly positive approach through debt-for-equity conversions to build productive local businesses to improved employment and contributed to the local economies.
I learned long ago that anyone who wants to denigrate an activity can creatively do so with one logic or another. It isn’t even that hard. Is a resort hotel a good or bad thing? It provides jobs and pleasure. It has an economic multiplier effect but it uses scarce national resources to the exclusion of local use and perhaps imports pollution. It promotes frivolity and envy where serious endeavor should reside. It gives pride to locals, but reinforces the master/servant roles. As a service economy it is far less invasive than extractive or many industrial endeavors, but then there is little room for professional growth that would create lasting local value added. It’s a tough analysis that can go in many directions.
What are we saying to ourselves with all this conundrum of imbedded risks to success? Are we suggesting that it is best not to try to achieve success for fear of doing harm now or forever more? That would devalue human evolution and development and the benefits that come from it. That can’t be right. I will suggest an alternate hypothesis. I think that all we can do is to focus our efforts on activities that we view in today’s light as productive and additive to society. That alone would help us avoid many harmful activities that have as their sole purpose to make money for the purveyor. We could then add the caveat that we seek to do no harm to the best of our ability. That might help us avoid taking directions with these businesses that might modify towards inadvertent though harmful effect. Naturally this is all subjective and hinges on the perspective of different people with vastly different aims. One man’s success is another man’s failure.