In a recent column I presented a critique of the economic system known as “capitalism.” I argued that the beating heart of that system is the single-minded pursuit of profit, or, to put it more simply, greed. “Single-minded,” I should add, is meant quite literally, for capitalist theory holds that any capitalist who does not make a whole-hearted effort to maximize profit impairs the system’s ability to magically transform individual selfishness into the common good.

In my column, I concluded that this assurance of universal benefits was a lie, for it was inevitable that an economic system rooted in selfishness would prove to be incompatible with value systems that have evolved to enable humans to live together with mutual benefit and minimal conflict.

Despite this incompatibility, capitalism is not inclined to alter its obsessive pursuit of profit, nor will it willingly accept regulations that curtail that pursuit. Here are three recent examples of capitalism’s conflicts with social values.

One of the earliest governmental regulations of capitalist enterprise was Great Britain’s law restricting child labor. That law was passed in the 1930s, and the United States passed a similar law in the same decade. It now turns out, according to a New York Times investigative report, that American companies have been hiring under-age immigrant young people for some time. Most of them are in their early teens and have come legally to the U.S. from Central America. Most live with relatives in this country; and a great many feel obligated to send money back home, or feel that they need to help the families they live with, or are in debt to their sponsors for smuggling fees. So, they look for work.

They are required to go to school but many drop out because they can’t manage both a job and education. The NYT interviewed hundreds of immigrant teen workers and found many who had left school and could no longer be reached by the authorities. A teacher commented: “It’s the new child labor. You’re taking children from another country and putting them in almost indentured servitude.”

When companies were informed that they were illegally employing under-age workers, they professed to be upset, though it’s almost certain that they already knew that they were doing so. Days after the NYT report was published, the Biden administration announced a crackdown on the exploitation of migrant children.

Another example of how the capitalist ethic subverts more enlightened social standards of conduct is the suit against Fox News. The Dominion computer company has accused Fox News of defaming it by frequently reporting favorably on the theory that Dominion had secretly rigged its ballot-counting computers to transform Trump votes into Biden votes. It alleges that Fox News knew perfectly well that this was not the case, but persisted in giving credence to that allegation.

There are many interesting angles to this story, but what interests me here is that capitalistic considerations played a major role in Fox News’s behavior. We sometimes forget that when we watch a network news program, we are consuming a product. We don’t pay directly for that product, but our watching affects the overall share of the general TV audience that is watching the program, and that “market share” determines the value of advertising on the program, which, in turn, determines the profits made by Fox News and the salaries of its employees.

When the November vote count began to come in, Fox News was the first to call the Arizona vote for Biden, whereupon its staff, who monitor almost instantaneous ratings data called “minute by minutes,” noticed an immediate drop in the number of viewers. Hard-core right-wingers, it turned out, didn’t want to hear that Trump had lost Arizona and switched to a competitive news source that kept their hopes alive.

At that time, Fox newsman Sean Hannity had an off-mike exchange with fellow hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham in which he ranted about “incalculable” damage done by the Arizona vote announcement to the Fox News “brand” and the likelihood that competing right-wing news services, like Newsmax, would permanently steal viewers from them and reduce their income.

Dominion has the evidence to prove that Fox News, after the Arizona vote call, deliberately lied to their audience about the election being stolen, in order to prevent their viewers from moving to someone else’s news program. And that’s why Fox endorsed the rumor that Dominion voting machines had massively falsified votes. Dominion thinks it has the evidence to prove its case.

Most of us, when we tune into the evening news, do not expect the news itself to be, in effect, a sales pitch designed to keep us watching. We assume that the rules in operation are the rules of the profession that news reporters represent: journalism. We expect to be told the truth, insofar as it is obtainable, or at least the probable truth. At a minimum, we expect newspersons to tell us what they actually think, not what they think we want to hear.

A final example of the consequences of capitalists’ resentment of regulation, and success in escaping from it, is the recent failure of two banks in Silicon Valley. President Barack Obama, in the wake of the 2008 “Great Recession,” had passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which mandated increased control and monitoring of banks, including detailed “stress tests” designed to reveal how well a bank could withstand threats to its stability (including a period of higher interest rates). Banks chafed under these regulations because they limited the bank’s freedom to make high-risk investments and reap spectacular profits.

In 2018, the Trump administration succumbed to pressure from the stock exchange and lobbyists — including the chief executive of the Silicon Valley Bank — to weaken Dodd-Frank and allow banks to make riskier investments. And that’s exactly what SVB did. But the risks made the bank vulnerable, its low-interest bond investments lost value, its stock took a nosedive, depositors began to worry, and a run on the bank was imminent. The FDIC had to intervene to close it. Ironically, just hours before the bank was closed, its executives had received their annual bonuses, which, it’s believed, amounted to well over $100,000 per executive.

It's worth remembering that insofar as banks are secure places to put your money, that’s largely due to government regulation and backing, for banks are, intrinsically, capitalist enterprises. They obey the capitalist motto: Greed is good; you can’t make too much profit.