Citizenship and Community: More Than Market

Kudos to Mr. Epp—actually, to Mr. Epp's dad—for eloquently capturing another reason to be wary of Hyperion's refinery promises at Elk Point. Todd isn't ready to condemn the project, but his dad can point to excellent examples of Big Oil failing to act as good corporate citizens:

“You know, in Aurora, Nebraska (the county seat of the county he grew up in), they have a beautiful new hospital, nursing home, museum, and a library twice as big as we have here in Augusta.

“The oil companies and refineries left nothing for Augusta and El Dorado. They just took and took and took and gave nothing back” [Todd Epp's dad, quoted by Todd in "What Kind of Corporate Citizen Will Hyperion Be?" SD Watch, 2008.07.08].

Some of the apologists for Big Oil and corporate greed who comment here seem to think that the only virtue a business (or an individual) needs to exercise is to work hard in its own capitalist self-interest. Such "market fundamentalism" leads not just to towns lacking public facilities, but also to (as Fred Block puts it) "weak economic performance, corporate crime waves, government corruption and a coarsening of the culture."

Adam Smith said markets work that way, but even Smith recognized that (Block again) "sustainable prosperity must be built on strong moral foundations." And no, "strong moral foundations" doesn't mean villainizing homosexuals and promiscuous women; it means building a sustainable moral economy ("moral economy"—not an oxymoron!) on principles of "reciprocity, responsible competition, conservation, and cooperation" (Block). Cooperation—in other words, seeing your business (and yourself) not as some autonomous atom, unbonded, free to do whatever you want, but as an entity rooted in and obligated to its community.

The oil barons of Kansas apparently focused entirely on profit and competition, to the detriment of the communities from which they extracted that profit. If oil barons come to South Dakota, let's hope they see our communities as more than markets.

Read more: the quotes above come from Fred Block, "Creating a Moral Economy," The Nation, 2006.03.21. reprinted by Alternet.org.