In mid-January, the Greater Houston Partnership held its annual meeting. Incoming board chair, Marc Watts called upon members to be more “civically engaged.” He said that business leaders have important values to contribute to the political process. And one of those values is the willingness to compromise.
The third value is the willingness to compromise. In broader terms, our state and our country seem to be at a stalemate, and we are being starved in the realm of good public policy. We have forgotten how to build consensus.
Business leaders know how to do this. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in business. Now is the time for the business community to weigh in and help end the destructive partisanship that is taking us down the road to a very bad place.
The willingness to compromise, I submit, is a primary reason for the current state of affairs in America.
A compromise is an agreement in which both sides make concessions. This is appropriate and often necessary in business. In a business transaction, the parties agree to the principles involved–they will exchange values. The compromise occurs in regard to the details of that exchange–price, delivery dates, warranties, and similar things. They are not compromising on principles.
But the compromises that Watts is endorsing do involve principles. Watts wants businessmen to negotiate and compromise with government officials.
As an example, let us say that city officials decide to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Such a proposal would threaten the freedom of businesses to operate as they deem best. The principle of property rights would be under attack, and no compromise is possible.
A casual observer might think that businessmen might negotiate a lower minimum wage, and thereby compromise. But no matter what rate they negotiate, the businessmen have abandoned the principle of property rights. Rather than defend their moral right to use their property as they choose, they will have granted government officials the power to dictate property use. In time, those officials will raise the minimum wage. Businessmen will be morally disarmed because they previously abandoned the principle of property rights, and they will be left to bicker over details.
If businessmen really want to be “civically engaged,” they would do well to reject compromise in the political arena. Instead, they should stand on principle and refuse to compromise with those who want to control and dictate.