Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [123]
There are two important things to note here. First, shareholder theory would allow a CEO to consider the interests of other stakeholders, but only in an instrumental way.7 Treat the customers well, but only to the extent necessary to increase profits. Only the law can serve as a legitimate constraint on profit maximization. Second, stakeholder theory would admit profit as a central goal, but primarily instrumentally. Friedman put it this way: “Maximizing profits is an end from the private point of view; it is a means from the social point of view.”8 Profit allows the corporation to thrive and continue to create value for a variety of stakeholders. Stockholders also have a legitimate claim to expect a return on their investments, and so the CEO will value profit in its own right, but she would not feel the need to maximize profit at the expense of other values, as Friedman suggests.
What this opens up is the requirement for decision makers within a company to retain their sense of personal moral responsibility in their roles and to recognize the many stakeholders as persons as well. Generally speaking, with respect to stakeholder theory, it is when a company fails to respect a group of people by at least weighing their interests or by weighing them far too lightly that one might claim the company acted wrongly. In the next three sections, let’s look at how Seuss comments on these stakeholder relationships in commerce, starting with the relationship between a business and its customers.
Caveat Emptor: “No, You Can’t Teach a Sneetch”
So, we’ve all heard the expression: Buyer Beware! Is this a bit of prudential advice, or an attitude of justification for convention? If the former, no problem. I would advise anyone to use caution with others when money is on the line, since all of us give in to temptation sometime. But sometimes this phrase is used as a justification: “I’m not wrong for having cheated you . . . you should’ve known better.”9 The good Doctor presents us with a perfect illustration in Sylvester McMonkey McBean, the “Fix-It-Up Chappie” from “The Sneetches.”
So the Sneetches are divided into two social classes, Plain-Belly and Star-Belly, with those with “stars upon thars” as the dominant class. Besides being a wonderful allegory about the social construction of class and the role fashion plays in it, the poem provides a great example of the exploitation and manipulation of consumer desires. McBean swings into town with a machine to print stars on bellies, allowing second-class Sneetches to appropriate the appearance of first-class Star-Bellies for a small fee. Unable to maintain class domination without a means to discern class membership, Star-Bellies now desire a new way to differentiate themselves. McBean has a “Star-Off Machine” to do the trick, and soon he has all of the Sneetches filing in and out of his two machines. Once he has taken all of their money, he leaves the Sneetches confused on the beaches, laughingly exclaiming, “They never will learn. No. You can’t teach a Sneetch” (Sneetches).
But before we look at McBean more closely, let’s consider a prevalent principle in ethics. Immanuel Kant famously argued that morality is grounded on a fundamental command built into the nature of every rational being, the categorical imperative.10 Something like the Golden Rule, the categorical imperative requires an agent