Private property, competition,
and the market-mechanism have come to be assumed to be integral to the economic
system of Capitalism. The assumption that this cluster of attributes is
necessary is faulty though, as, for example, the state can own some or all of
the “means of production” (i.e., firms) that are subject to market competition,
especially if privately-owned enterprises also exist. China had a mix of
private and state-owned enterprises compete in several industries when the
state opened the economy to competitive forces setting supply and demand. In
Wisconsin, the Green Bay Packers, an NFL football team, is owned by the
residents of that city, such ownership being Socialism, and yet that team has
competed not only to win, but also in the hiring of players and managers. A
competitive market does not require that the property of the means of
production be privately owned. Even in the case of private ownership of
companies, the widely accepted custom wherein the owners receive the residual
profits after expenses is dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary.
Alternatively, creditors or employees/managers could receive any excess revenue
after expenses have been paid. In short, Capitalism as it has come to be known
and exercised is more arbitrary than capitalists may realize. Even the
taken-for-granted distinction between public and private property is not as
stark as may be typically supposed. This is no excuse, however, for businesses
that knowingly encroach on public property as if it were their own private
property. A Capitalist economic system predicated on private property may
contain not only the seed of monopoly, as Marx claimed, but also a tendency of
private enterprises to over-reach on the public domain. If so, government has a
responsibility to prune back the overweening tentacles. Two examples make this point.
Once while walking on a narrow
sidewalk, I glanced down at my phone and was instantly startled as I ran into
and tumbled over a metal chair in the middle of the sidewalk. A restaurant’s
employees had set up tables on the side of the sidewalk with chairs out into
the middle of the sidewalk, and a bit beyond a table had been placed in the
middle of the sidewalk, with a potted plant placed making it even more
difficult to navigate around the tables and chairs. Who would want to eat in
the middle of a sidewalk, with people passing by at close range? The manager of
that restaurant was guilty not only of missing this rather basic point, but
also of the incredible presumption that the public sidewalk was essentially
part of the business’s private property, which astonishingly placed the public
at a disadvantage on public property!
A month earlier, I had called the zoning department of the city. I had been assured that a restaurant cannot obstruct a sidewalk. However, the city then failed to act, perhaps capitulating to the business interest (and wealth). So, after I nearly fell from running into the chair, I called the city again. The employee who answered insisted that the city gives permits allowing businesses to permanently block or obstruct public sidewalks. So, I called again and spoke with another person who had more of a sympathetic ear when I explained that I had almost fallen, and that a hazard exists because numerous pedestrians walk into the street because of the obstruction. Two weeks later, with Franks Bar and Grill still interlarding on public property, I left a phone message for the code enforcement person. Two weeks after that, as the photo below demonstrates, the restaurant was still blocking the sidewalk.
I know that the city had opened an investigations months earlier, so I surmise that the restaurant's owner or manager knew of the complaints and dismissed them. Additionally, I suspect that the city of Pittsburgh had bowed to the business interest at the expense of the public good. This is as much of a problem as is the presumptuousness and dismissiveness of a business that can take advantage of a corrupt municipal government.
Another example of companies encroaching on public "space" is the overreaching of security guards and private police employees presuming that their turf extends beyond a company's private property. When I lived temporarily in Pittsburgh, while I was walking on a public sidewalk along a hospital that was part of the University of Pittsburgh, I stopped at a food-truck only to realize that a security guard was perched on a small hill from which he seemed to have been presumptuously patrolling the sidewalk. In the distance was another security guard.
Initially, I thought he was in line to order food from the food truck as I was. So I held back. Strangely, he likely viewed my standing position with suspicion, or, more likely, dislike as I was looking generally in his direction. Not all subtle, he strategically walked past me up close and stopped further along on the sidewalk, presumably there to talk to another food vender, yet his body position reveals his real orientation.
The presumptuousness of that university-affiliated hospital was visible in the choice of the security guard’s uniform mimicking that of the police—including with a silver “badge” and handcuffs. If the hospital was breaching the state's monopoly of police powers, which in general is a larger problem, I submit that the visible artifacts added to the possible presumptuousness of the wearers that company security hyper-extends "off campus" even if the state permits it. The artifacts also misled the public into supposing that the company's police were the same as the city police. At the very least, a company's private security or "police" employees do not necessarily receive the same training as the regular police receive. There is also the problem of legitimacy from a democratic standpoint once the state's monopoly of police powers, as per the U.S. Constitution, is violated by companies.
Just a public property is distinct from private property, a company's employees are distinct from a government's police force (and power). Encroachment onto a government's use of force puts a company in a conflict of interest in that its security employees are not in an even-handed position in disagreements between a company's management and its stakeholders. Human nature being what it is, we should not assume that the employees would be fair in cases in which a management oversteps its own authority ethically or legally.
I contend that business managers have a tendency to overreach, even perceiving public property as fair game to be captured for the private, narrower, interest of a business as the public interest suffers. This tendency on the microlevel is the same as that which fuels a company in a competitive industry to become a monopoly. John D. Rockefeller, for example, pressured competitors unwilling to be bought by his Standard Oil company. The titan had the audacity to view himself as a Noah saving the drowning competitors from being ruined by the destructive competition especially in the 1860s, and as a Christ-figure saving them. Unlike Rockefeller, Jesus in the Gospel stories does not kill off people who are unwilling to accept his help. Rockefeller even pressured the railroads to pay Standard Oil a “drawback” when they carried the oil of his competitors. Such encroachment breached what was thought to be ethical business conduct at the time, which in turn included some practices that would come to be regarded as unethical. The titan’s presumptuousness thus extended to treating the railroads as akin to his own property. By such means of encroachment, Rockefeller built his company into a monopoly in the refining industry. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in 1913, but made the mistake of keeping in tact the same ownership in all of the resulting companies. The managements thereof were even allowed to be in the same building! A willingness to stand up to powerful businesses and competency as to how to break up their excessive market power from previous encroachments are both important if the private-property attribute of modern Capitalism is not to eviscerate the attributes of competition and the market-mechanism. Given the tendency of business managers to shirk the public interest, society needs some means of protecting public property from the inevitable encroachments.
