As we come out of this COVID-19 pandemic, it's been interesting to see how much effort businesses have been undertaking to tell us what they are doing about employee and consumer safety. Go on to almost any business website (often necessary because in-store purchasing is not always an option), and they'll have a very important announcement telling us what they are doing. But it's not just about the pandemic...it's about everything now. Sports leagues continually tell us about what they are doing about racial justice; restaurants for some time have been trying to speak about how they are good neighbors and working hard to reduce their environmental footprint; and many large companies in recent years talk about how they are 'partnering' with good charities like Habitat for Humanity or soup kitchens. It's almost as if they recognize that they aren't there just to make money, but do good beyond the bottom line.
On the other hand, consider how our POTUS has tried to downplay the necessity of government to get involved during the pandemic. It wasn't his responsibility to be a shipping clerk with masks. It's not the federal government's responsibility to get generators and track the virus (those are state problems!). And it's not on his watch that hundreds of thousands have died or government has been very slow to do something about these problems...sure, you can blame Obama (3 1/2 years gone), but then any good news about the economy (which is non-existent now) is all because of him.
It used to be thought that the role of government was to ensure the greater good for all people; it used to be thought that the role of business and private enterprise was to make money. Now, it seems, everything has changed. Businesses are taking on (or at least claiming to) many of those roles that were the domain of the public sector, while governments (or at least this government) are stepping back and saying that such things are not their problem. Doesn't this seem completely mixed up?
I'm guessing that the obvious answer is that our Trumpite nutjob federal leadership is mostly to blame for this. For all his minions' belief that he is out there fighting the 'Deep State', he's just really lazy and can't be bothered to do the job of administering the nation. Too much twittering and golfing needs to get done. But I do think that private enterprise has in some ways recognized that it is better to do good, and that perhaps is the long-term plan to be more viable in the eyes of a picky consumer public. Is their desire truly altruistic? Certainly not. But even if their motives are not fully pure, at least they are trying to do something, more so than we can say for the federal government, which at its highest levels has turned into a Trump Support group in recent years.
Once the current POTUS is gone, hopefully in just a few months, I'm wondering if business will get back to normal, and look at profits again. Perhaps...but I do think that things have shifted, and businesses perhaps are more representative of the needs of society now than a duly-elected government. What does this say about democracy and where it is going? Is this a libertarian dream?
I really don't know...but hopefully smarter people than me can figure this out.
