Why Sociopaths Make More Money

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A distinct parallel exists between psychopathy and the actions of many corporations, which under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, have the same legal rights as individuals. In fact, corporate personhood grants corporations equal treatment to natural persons under the law per a National Public Radio interview with Yale Law Professor, John Witt. 

When corporate personhood is utilized as a tool to achieve better legal protection for the objective of making profit the potential for corporate psychopathy exists. This is because without regard to less convenient aspects of natural personhood, "corporate persons", which are comprised of persons who aren't necessarily psychopathic, risk sidestepping human and systemic functionality in the name of profitable psychopathy.  The movie "The Corporation" explains this in detail, and illustrates how each symptom of psychopathic behavior is demonstrated by corporations; an excerpt of this film is below.

 

But what does corporate psychopathy have to do with making money? The answer to that is embedded in what corporations make possible, namely unbridled sociopathy, which in many ways, is essential to psychopathy. Since corportions are essentially money making entities, it also follows that the method of business, which is oftentimes sociapathic, is also good for making money. Individuals that emulate businesses, are therefore at risk of also emulating sociopathic behavior. 

This pattern of behavior is also noted by Psychiatrist Montague Ullman. Ullman clearly draws the conclusion that corporations, who as persons are psychopathic, contribute to systemic dysfunction. Furthermore, the problem associated with this according to Ullman, is "contamination of whatever circles the psychopath moves in", including government. However, Ullman states, "free reign on profit making" is a contributing factor to this, which also implies sociopaths make more money.

To illustrate further, feelings, empathy, relationships, and honesty get in the way of profitability because they require the corporation to recognize more expensive aspects of personhood. For example, vacation and sick leave benefits cost productivity hours,  and employment law means costly benefits and minimum wage, so corporations evade employment law by contracting instead. That, according to Ullman's 7th criteria of psychopathy, is related to, if not indistinguishable from, "lack of remorse as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from another".

The bottom line for many businesses is, people are customers, employees are human resources, and the goal of business is to generate profit. In many cases this is done regardless of harm to human relationships, disregard for the safety of others, poor strategic planning and deceitfulness under the veil of a logos, trademarks and corporate labels. Sociopaths, and even persons able to implement sociopathic agendas, make more money because the best exploitation requires heartless, and possibly even soulless decision making. Thing is, when we are taught money makes the world go around, we are also learning that sociopathy might be ok too.