If 60,000 people camping out in Manhattan have made a statement, it's that people are a bit mad about corporate America right now, maybe even corporate policy worldwide.

Everyone's got an opinion about what's gone rotten. It's a culture of greed, it's a devaluation of the worker, it's a lack of regulation, or it's the sign of a growing schism between company ownership and employees.

Certain individuals have responded by attacking the protesters themselves, calling them Anti-American, lazy, indignant, and selfish in their own right. In my opinion, this only underscores the theory that executives at the highest levels of many corporations are simply out of touch with the average worker. Proposals to tax the wealthy, to muzzle the wealthy, and to force executives to better compensate their workforce also more subtly underscore how we, the average American, may also lack the perspective of the Fortune 500 executive crowd.

I think most people understand that the purpose of business is to provide labor for profit. I think that both executives and workers are in the game to profit, if not to 'win'. There is common ground between workers and executives, but there's a lot of confusion about where things 'all went wrong'. The global economy, as we've heard to death, is ailing and the response to hard times for most companies has been to increase prices, introduce new fees, or reduce risk. This means that people with less money are being asked to pay more, and it's ruffled a lot of feathers, mine included.

It begs the question: What the hell is going on? We expect the leaders of modern business to have an eye for profit, but can't they tell that they're alienating themselves from their consumers? From their foundation?

Of course, I have a theory on what's happened. It's complex, yes, but I'd like to think that it comes down to basic human needs and basic human failings.

This is not some sort of extraterrestrial threat. The CEOs of today's multinationals are not some race of superior space aliens with massive intellect, an incompatible set of values, and some sort of tar-like substance flowing through their veins. I think.

Like us, they seek profit. Like us, they seek a something a little better all the time, and like us they seek to hold on to what they've gained. Like us, they also have a way of forgetting the foundations of their success and placing less value on what they have than what they have yet to obtain.

Arguably, the most successful and massive modern multinational corporations today are Publicly Traded Companies, which welcome investment from just about anyone, rich or poor, with the promise of higher stock values and steady profit. These companies are massive because of the amount of public capital flowing through them-- a Private Company can't match the extraordinary resources of thousands or millions of investors.

But not all is well in Publicly Traded Companies. The desires of the shareholders are voiced, vaguely, by a Board of Directors. Weirdly, the modern Board of Directors (or equivalent) is not actually staffed by employees or executives of the company. They are outsiders, people with big money and lots of capital whose primary interest is a payout, with less of an emphasis on the health or structure of the company they are presiding over.

Boards of Directors have a great deal of power over executive candidacy and compensation. As relative outsiders to the actual operations of the company, it's not uncommon (in fact, it's quite common) to appoint Board members or ex-politicians as the CEO of their respective companies. For anyone who's gotten a shareholder report in the mail before, you're probably familiar with the sense of bewilderment at just how much of everyone's money is going straight to the CEO, along with a very generous and cushy safety net, or 'golden parachute', in case the CEO is forced to resign or the company goes bankrupt.

Since the policy of most Boards of Directors is to hire people from outside the company, almost invariably the CEOs are people without any real anchor in the health of the company they preside over. Their duty is not to the company or the employee, or even the shareholder, but to their own continued existence. They're effectively today's mercenaries, and often have work and interests on the side that distract from, or even directly contradict the aims of the company. Put concisely, they're in it for the pay, not for the long haul.

What impact does this have? Why is CEO loyalty important? Does this have any bearing on the common worker, like you and I?

It does. A CEO without any connectedness with his company ethic or workforce has no incentive to protect them. If he succeeds, he can secure a healthy income for a very long time, and if he fails he is personally insured to walk away from disaster mostly unscathed, or at least with enough money to retire quite comfortably. Without any intimacy with the company he focuses, quite naturally, on himself.

What does this do to the salaried employees and management of the company? What does this say?

For the company loyalist who works hard with the hopes of obtaining that valuable promotion to an executive position, it simply says that the company doesn't value their skills or even their chairs. It transforms the real, loyal management of a company into a separate strata, just a layer of workers beneath the Board of Directors and the CEO. If there is no hope that the company's executives can one day become Board members or CEOs, a definitive ceiling is placed on their careers. Simply put, there is no longer any chance of rising to the top.

So, with demands coming from above and no hope of ever getting there, the company's management and executives also begin to think about themselves. Rising to the company's leadership is no longer important, since it has no real value. The main concern, then, becomes finding ways to profit personally. Loyalty to the company becomes valueless, and by extension loyalty to the workforce is also valueless. The more people that can be found to lay off, the better, since the best hope of compensation upper management has comes in the form of bonuses.

It should come as no surprise under this climate that many of our immediate or district supervisors appear to be unconcerned with the health of the company and the viability of its workforce.

And now we get down to the foundation of the matter, the workforce. The lowly grunt, the local manager, and the shit-shoveler. With the company leadership trying to destroy the company executives, and the company executives trying to gut the workforce, the only real cause for loyalty and hard work most employees have is pure income. Like our bosses and our bosses' bosses, the average employee has little reason to care for the company they work for. They work for the day, for the dollar, and for that nagging, persistent hope that one day they will be valued as human beings, and not simply fleshy tools. We work under 1,000 rules and the fear of punishment, for if we break a rule it is a sign of poor performance, and if we break two rules we'll be thrown on the street. Our motivation to stay is purely monetary. We too are mercenaries, jumping through hoops, wheeling, and dealing for a paycheck and a shot at more money, regardless of cost.

A company that doesn't trust its own employees, its own foundation, cannot succeed in the long term. Standards of conduct, a work ethic, and performance expectations are completely meaningless without loyalty to tie it all together. If there is no loyalty to the company at the top, there can be no loyalty to it at the bottom, and this is why large Public Corporations are eating their own guts in the hopes of staying solvent.

What's the solution to all of this? You can't regulate good business practice. You can't force people to be nice to each other at the threat of a lawsuit. You can't rob Peter to pay Paul. None of these solve the endemic, long-term issues.

What you can do, however, is start to place value on the workforce, and I think one of the best ways to do this is to provide opportunities not just to rise, but to rise all the way to the top. We need more CEOs who rise from within their own companies. We need more executives who rise from the workforce. We need a chance to reach the top, because greed is a powerful, powerful motivator and it can be harnessed for good, not just for ill. We're all a bit greedy on the inside, and the resentment we feel frankly comes from a belief that we will never get what we want, no matter how hard we try. If the economy is to recover, we don't need to attack the rich. We need to go straight to the source. We need to destroy despair, and all of the policies that enable it.