America Inc does not seem to care about the unpopularity of CEOs—and that’s reckless

Violence is never the correct response. But to corporate America, more disturbing than the violence may be how much public anger is directed at the targeted companies rather than the accused perpetrators.

A sharp reminder: At last week’s pre-trial hearing, a contingent of Mangione supporters wore ‘Free Luigi’ t-shirts, while a group of self-described ‘Mangionistas’ secured press credentials to combat what they said was the mainstream media’s “agenda.” (Mangione has pleaded not guilty.)

This faction might seem like the fringe, but it is more than an aberration. An Emerson College poll conducted not long after Thompson’s murder found that 17% of respondents said the accused’s actions were acceptable—a figure that jumped to 41% for the 18- to 29-year-old cohort.

For the first time, US law enforcement agencies have identified “anti-tech violent extremism” as an emergent threat. And more broadly, roughly one in five Americans support some kind of political violence.

The numbers reflect a growing sense of public powerlessness and distrust towards today’s economic order—one in which CEOs have increasingly become both the proxies and public face of the system itself.

Skyrocketing inequality and ballooning executive pay have convinced the ‘have nots’ that the economy is rigged to benefit the ‘haves.’ Growing fear and suspicion of artificial intelligence (AI) has left workers feeling uncertain about the future and with a sense that employers view them only as “lower-value human capital” or a “human assembly line”—because their bosses have literally described them that way.

As a country, America has been here before—when it comes to both the attacks and the underlying social tensions that are stoking their support.

Some 150 years ago during the Gilded Age, the US lived through a similar cocktail of technological disruption and rising income inequality that turned the era’s corporate elite into targets of public violence and anger. But the business leaders who emerged after that era realized that if they wanted to stay both in power and money, they would have to find a way to make capitalism work for more than just themselves—what they called “enlightened self-interest.”

Modern corporate America’s response to many of the same undercurrents has been far narrower. There are more bodyguards and armoured vehicles but much less evidence of any real reckoning with growing anti-corporate resentment. The public sees plenty of self-interest; what it increasingly doubts is the enlightened part. It seems that today’s titans and tycoons have become so enamoured of the AI future that they’ve collectively failed to heed the lessons of the past.

During the Gilded Age, the monied aristocracy became the focus of the public’s wrath as technological developments led to concentrations of wealth like nothing the country had seen before. The likes of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Carnegie Steel chairman Henry Frick were all the targets of violent attacks or plots. (It’s worth noting that plenty of the tycoons of the era directed violent attacks against striking workers.)

“It was a moment when these major industrialists and financiers were becoming symbols of that new world order—a world that a lot of people don’t like,” says Yale University history professor Beverly Gage, whose book The Day Wall Street Exploded chronicles the 1920 attack on the J.P. Morgan building that killed 39.

As is the case with today’s powerbrokers, the Robber Barons of the late 19th and early 20th century responded to the threats and social instability by ramping up their security. Then they travelled in armored railcars and hired private security agencies. Now they build luxury survival bunkers.

But that may be where the historical parallels end. Coming out of the Gilded Age, in the post-Depression and World War II era, the business aristocracy more readily accepted higher taxes, unions, regulation and wages. They recognized that paying a decent wage meant that workers could purchase the goods and services that their companies produced.

In his book The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite, University of Michigan sociology professor Mark Mizruchi argues this positioning was driven in part by a sense of responsibility but also this “enlightened self-interest.” “Their view was the best way to maintain their own privilege was to ensure that the entire society rested on a solid foundation,” Mizruchi told me.

There was a moment when it seemed today’s business leaders were interested not just in empire-building but world-saving. But as the political winds have shifted, the talk of corporations as a force for good or making the world a better place have disappeared.

That has made it harder for the public to believe Altman when he says AI can make “the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine” or Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos when he promises that doubling his taxes won’t help a teacher or nurse make ends meet.

In his work, Mizruchi cites a fellow sociologist who found that one factor, more than any other, led to the fall of various empires throughout history: Each empire’s elites reached a point when they started to hoard resources for themselves, stripping their broader societies of the funds they needed to function.

He writes, “In effect, today’s corporations and wealthy are hoarding society’s resources for themselves, while starving the treasury of funds that are badly needed for repairing and strengthening the society on which their wealth depends.”

It may very well be the most self-destructive form of short-termism that exists in corporate America today. ©Bloomberg

The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering corporate America.