仇视企业要不得

    今年的美国总统大选中，有两句口号大热：“这不是你一人打造的”，“企业不是自然人”。第一句或许是信口所至，第二句在竞选演讲中广受欢迎、反复高呼，藉此民主党也明确表明了对当今美国企业界的看法。

    但是，意外吗？我们不同意。对企业当然不能毫无约束，没有任何形式的监督或控制。但在我们看来，企业给社会带来了太多益处，创造希望，提供机会，这是其他任何机构都难以企及的。

    既然企业的好处远大于弊病，为什么有些人却对企业界恨之入骨？近来，我们开始试图找出背后的原因。因为长此以往，企业被妖魔化的风险太高了。

    下面是我们的发现。首先，有些人憎恶企业显然是因为他们部分、或者全盘支持社会主义信条。这种意识形态层次太丰富，无法在这里一一概述，但简单来说就是它的支持者相信，“人必须撒播财富”，正如总统奥巴马所言。

    其次，有些人厌恶企业不是由于意识形态，而是源于个人经历——他们曾经被不公正地解雇，碰上过糟糕透顶的老板。这些人认为企业就是好人受欺的地方。

    另外一些人的不满则来自于本轮金融危机。他们认为，正是很多金融机构和评级机构的严重失察，导致很多无辜的美国人丢了饭碗和房子，还有可能拖垮整个美国经济。

    最后，最有害的或许是公知精英们的敌意。这些处于新闻媒体、学术界和政府中的意见领袖们由于拥有极其强大的影响力，他们的错误见解可能造成极大的危害。在这些人看来，企业界已经烂到了骨子里，因为这里毫无公平可言。要不然，怎么解释在大学里成天游手好闲的“派对动物”最后反而取得了成功？

    "You didn't build that." "Corporations aren't people." With the first, a revealing gaffe, and the second, a wildly cheered campaign refrain, one party has certainly made it clear how it feels about American business these days.

    Well -- big surprise -- we don't agree. Business can't operate unfettered, of course, without any form of oversight or control. But in our view, business is a source of great good for society, with the power to create hope and opportunity like no other institution going.

    Indeed, the positives so outweigh the negatives that lately we've been trying to identify why some people hate business so fervently. After all, the risks of this movement's efforts to demonize business are frighteningly high.

    Here's where we've landed. First, there's clearly a group of people who disdain business because they support some or all of the fundamental leveling tenets of socialism. This ideology is too multifaceted to summarize here, but suffice it to say that its adherents believe, as the President once put it, "You've got to spread the wealth around."

    Then there are people who hate business not because of ideology but because of personal experience -- they've been wrongly fired, endured a dreadful boss. These individuals see business as a place where good people get burned.

    For still others, their hostility derives from the recent financial meltdown, when the sheer negligence of many financial institutions and rating agencies, they believe, resulted in blameless Americans losing their jobs and homes and threatened to bring down the entire economy.

    Finally, and perhaps most pernicious because of its outsize influence, is the hostility toward business that radiates from the intellectual elite -- the opinion leaders in journalism, academia, and government. To them, business is rotten because it's just so completely unfair. Otherwise, how do you explain the success of the party animal who lived down the hall in college?