BrianGarst.com

Clark Howard at CNN describes two ex-Best Buy employees who were fired for pursuing and capturing a shoplifter in one of their stores.

These two Best Buy employees tackled a shoplifter they saw busting out of their Denver, Colorado-area store with stolen electronics. They wrestled the suspect to the ground at great personal risk. The perpetrator pulled out a knife and cut a manager before ultimately escaping, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Bergstreser had been a three-year employee, while Trapp was on the job for less than a year. What did Best Buy do for these employees who showed such extreme loyalty? They fired them.

Clark is right to be incredulous, but I think he misses the mark when he primarily blames Best Buy for this outcome, and more generally faults “corporate America” for what he calls “the ‘not in my silo’ mentality.” He describes this mentality as the “times we wait for help to arrive when we’re the help we seek.”

Is this really something that originated in corporate America, or is it a natural consequence of the elevation of collective over individual responsibility? Clark scoffs when an acquaintance mentions liability as a possible reason for Best Buy’s stance. Yet in today’s sue-first-think-later culture – where any negative event is a fault of others for which they must pay – businesses can hardly be blamed for being hyper-cautious of any risk taking by those under their employ. If an employee had been stabbed to death by the thief, you can bet the deep pockets of Best Buy would have been the first place the family of the deceased would have reached for compensation. Even worse, if the criminal had suffered serious injury, a lawsuit would have been quickly forthcoming. After all, it’s the job of the police to apprehend criminals, right?

That’s certainly the kind of attitude perpetuated by the American political left. When average Americans go about defending their property and the nation’s borders because the federal government refuses to do so, they are not only labeled vigilantes, but slandered as racist, xenophobic nutjobs.

Crime and defense of property are not the only areas where individual responsibility has fallen by the wayside. The existence of private charity is seen by many as de facto proof of government failure. Taking care of people, after all, is a government responsibility first and a social one second, if at all; or so the collectivists insist.

Clark blames corporate America for being cowardly. But they have a responsibility to their shareholders to make a return on their investment, not to be brave. In other words, he misses the point. Corporations respond to social and economic cues; they don’t drive them. In a world where individual responsibility is shunned and even punished via civil lawsuits by the dominant collectivist culture, corporations will be forced to discourage actions like those of the two heroic Best Buy workers. Corporations are cowardly, but no more so than, and it is as a direct consequence of, our cowardly society which demands that only central authorities be allowed to solve life’s problems.

collectivism individualism