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Neil H. Jacoby

90 quotes

“The revelation that American companies were making payments to foreign political parties and government officials touched a sensitive nerve in the post-Watergate era. Although most knowledgeable people were aware of the bribery of domestic government officials, they felt more keenly about the payment of millions of dollars to foreign officials.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today, multinational business is under attack by socialist and other critics on a wide spectrum of issues. New charges that multinational firms corrupt the officials of foreign governments have been added to the litany of criticism Many governments, especially those of the Third World, have taken or threaten to take punitive and restrictive actions against foreign companies. Such measures would impede international investment, slow down economic progress, and damage the economic welfare of all countries concerned.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since 1950, American enterprises have invested in virtually every part of the world. Their annual exports in 1976 were more than $117 billion, and their foreign investments in book value were about $133 billion. This unparalleled international movement of goods, capital, technology, and managerial resources has had both successes and failures, but the former have by far outweighed the latter.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lubrication payments are not subject to a going rate. They are usually determined by what the traffic will bear. The usual way for a government official to extract a payment is by threatening obstruction or delay in carrying out his official duties… Large political payments are rarely transferred directly by a principal to an upper echelon official; rather, a middleman is used. He may be a professional ‘fixer’ who is himself a low-level government functionary; more often he will be a member of the same family as the high-level recipient.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“State ownership of, and control over, much of the means of production has been an essential part of Middle Eastern economies. Unlike Europe, the Middle East did not produce a politically and economically influential bourgeoisie that could act as a countervailing power to the state and its rulers.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like their counterparts in other Third World nations, Middle Eastern socialist-orientated regimes are inefficient and mismanaged, and they tolerate the use of the political payments by those who must deal with them… The Middle East is one of the world’s most politically volatile regions. Nationalization of foreign investment is frequent, and taxation is high. National rivalries and the unresolved Israeli-Arab conflict contribute to the investor’s political risks.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The African nations that won their independence from the European colonial powers are, for the most part, uneasy confederations of tribes that are traditional enemies. The primary loyalty of their citizens is not to the state, but to the tribe and its chiefs. The political objective of the dominant tribe is to capture the country’s economic power base, which is the government, and, once it has been seized, to hold on to it.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“India’s political democracy was built on political payments. ‘Speed money,’ shakedowns, and gaining illegal access to wealth—known as ‘black money’—occupied much of the time and energy of the Congress Party while it was ruling India. For generations, corruption of government officials by Indian businessmen has bought official tolerance for hoarding, adulterating, smuggling, and black marketing. Payoffs have been an integral part of Indian business-government relations.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Indonesia dramatizes the dilemmas of the poor countries whose officials are forced to be corrupt. Maladministration reduces the collection of income taxes to provide revenue for the national treasury. Widespread smuggling further deprives the treasury of needed customs revenue. Lack of revenue prevents the payment of adequate salaries to the bureaucracy. This function of government is, then, fulfilled by private payments to underpaid civil servants. Thus, a vicious cycle breeds corruption in business-government relations.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Communist propagandists have long maintained that capitalism is the breeding ground of corruption. One would, therefore, expect to find in the communist orbit a ‘new man’ who has no appetite for the decadent bourgeois habits of the West. But fact as distinguished from myth reveals that corrupt practices abound in the communist nations.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Internal corruption grows out of the very nature of the communist economies—chronic shortages of consumer goods, their poor quality, the interminable delays in obtaining service and repairs, a centralized planning system that decides what people should wear or consume, whether they like the product or not.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because internal corruption is endemic to the communist system, it ineluctably conditions privileged elite to the habits of corruption in their external relations with other communist officials in the Eastern bloc countries and with the Western and Japanese businessmen who negotiate with the state enterprises.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would be virtually impossible to obtain proof outside the United States that foreign companies were making payments to officials of foreign governments to assist them in obtaining business. American companies may engage in mea culpa breastbeating in this country, but it is not a popular addiction abroad.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“During the decade of the 1970s, the print and electronic media emerged as an institution comparable in power and influence to the three coordinate branches of government. Shielded by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the press has become almost invulnerable to the criticism and legislative curbs that limit the power of such other social institutions as business or government. Congressmen, who depend upon the radio and television networks for national visibility, are loath to level criticisms at the media.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In its two most dramatic conflicts with the Nixon Administration—publication of the purloined Pentagon Papers and of the Watergate scandal—the Washington-based press corps and the New York-Washington press axis not only challenged but defeated a President of the United States. Indeed, Professor Huntington has asserted that the media were able to accomplish what no other group of politicians or disgruntled citizens had previously done in American history—bring about a journalistic coup d’etat that forced the resignation of a President.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although the media editorials have roundly condemned corporations for making political contributions at home and abroad—payments which were legal in many jurisdictions—they have yet to express equal indignation about the congressmen and public officials of this and other nations who receive these payments and who, in many instances, solicited them. Media voices have also been muted about violations of the Corruption Practice Act by the big labor unions.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The public has come to suspect that bribery of high foreign political figures by American companies is rampant. Yet the number of proven cases of bribery involving misconduct by high officials of foreign governments is very small. And many instances of misconduct are more extortion than bribery. The truth, however, is always hard to discover because of the clandestine nature of the transactions.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In many foreign nations, especially those in the Third World, political and social evolution has been such as to produce a monolithic state that lacks any clear division between a public and a private sector. Indeed, throughout much of the world today, official political ideology is hostile to the concepts of the private-enterprise market economy.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In consequence, the civil services of many Third World nations operate as feudal baronies, exploiting those with whom they deal. In the absence of institutions or organized groups capable of restraining official venality, the employees and officials of these bureaucracies possess virtually untrammeled power for obtaining personal wealth.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Payments made to, or extorted by, a corrupt bureaucracy can enable a socially chaotic system to function.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Political influence is exerted differently in the industrialized countries than in the agrarian, preindustrial societies. In the former, demands by individuals and special interest groups normally reach the political system before the enactment of legislation. Indeed, legislation is usually a consequence of such demands. Bribery of officials by businessmen is considerably lessened by the existence of open channels for the exercise of political influence.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the black market for political influence, who did what to whom makes much practical difference. But as the scales of justice are seen by the media world, guilt is not evenly assigned. It is useful to note that, in their coverage of political payments by American companies abroad, who initiates a political payment has not seemed to make much difference to the U.S. media—and, until recently, to the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Markets work most efficiently and the economy of a country develops best when the price and merits of products and services are the criteria that determine buying and selling—not secret payments to well-placed politicians and government employees.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While it is true that not everyone in such a country will agree that this is the best way to run the government’s ‘civil service,’ by and large one has to conclude that a system of petty extortion and bribery has become entrenched over time simply because the country and its people have decided that they want it that way.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The American tendency to equate economic efficiency with moral virtue has deep roots in our history. It helps to explain why Americans so widely embraced the ideology of Adam Smith… Competition in open markets was seen as the most efficient way to allocate limited human resources and to maximize the satisfaction of human wants. Interference with market processes by government officials—whether lawful or illicit—was interpreted as not only inefficient but immoral.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whenever any thought or idea or moral imperative is transferred from one society to another an important question is whether that which is transferred is freely sought by the recipient or is, to one degree or another, forced down his throat. Does the transference occur freely through reading or the reports of visitors to other lands, i.e., does it occur as a voluntary importation by one society of what another has developed or found, or does it occur through the coercion of the bayonet or propaganda?”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Experience has taught that a great power must always act with deliberation and restraint in pursuing its national interest, even when they coincide with the long-run global interest. U.S. efforts to reduce corruption in the business-government relationship throughout the world should be undertaken patiently and persistently, with an understanding of the problems confronting the governments of other nations, and without unrealistic expectations of speedy results.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Utopian critics reject both capitalism and authoritarian socialism and seek to establish new social orders based upon different human values.They believe that human nature can be radically changed. Individualistic striving for material gain is to be replaced by cooperative efforts to elevate the moral and cultural character of society. Wealth and income are to be shared according to need rather than according to productivity—an ideal not yet realized in any of the socialist countries. American-style capitalism and Soviet-style socialism equally err, they contend, in having hierarchical structures and in stressing material rewards; the difference between them are not significant.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The central them of Humanistic Marxism is the replacement, in the economy, of authoritarian penalties and material incentives with democratic processes and moral incentives…Great stress is laid upon an egalitarian distribution of income and wealth. Everyone is expected to perform some physical work… Corporations are maintained as state-owned facilities under joint government-worker control. Market competition and profit motivation are blunted or obliterated. Authoritarian political methods, officially shunned, are used in some degree to stifle dissent and to enforce industrial discipline provided by market competition in the United States.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In assessing business performance, we must keep in mind that ours is a pluralistic society. Indeed, the maintenance of pluralism by the diffusion of power among diverse institutions is itself a national goal. In such a society, each institution tends to specialize in the performance of those tasks in which it has a comparative advantage. The society is a highly complex system of interacting subsystems and institutions, in which the performance of each is affected by that of others. Hence, the business corporation should be assessed primarily with reference to the performance of its unique function of production, taking into account the effects of other institutions, such as governments and labor unions, upon its performance; no institution in a pluralistic society should be evaluated in isolation.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is widely believed that big business firms collectively own the preponderance of America’s wealth and are steadily expanding their share. The facts show the contrary. Corporate business owns about 28 percent of the tangible wealth of the United States, and its share has not changed much during the past fifty years. The bulk of the nation’s tangible wealth is held by the household and government sectors of the economy and is not employed in profit-seeking enterprise, corporate or noncorporate. …If the character of a society were to be designated by its major wealth-holding institution, the United States could more appropriately be described as a ‘household state’ than a ‘corporate state’.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Still another trend supports greater emphasis upon the social responsibilities of business firms and greater interest in the interactions between business and public policies. The great problems of contemporary society, such as environmental pollution, waste disposal, unemployment, poverty, urban renewal, and mass transit, are most likely to be solved by combining the organizational discipline of the action-oriented business corporation with the legal and taxing powers of government. Private corporations will more frequently be used to attain public purposes. At the same time, the public has made it clear that it will no longer tolerate the thrusting of private cost upon itself.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Multinational corporationis, among other things, a private ‘government,’ often richer in assets and more populous in stockholders and employees than some of the nation-states in which it carries on business. It is simultaneously a ‘citizen’ of several nation-states, owning obedience to their laws and paying taxes to their treasuries, yet having its own objectives and being responsive to a top management that may be located in another nation. Small wonder that some critics see in the multinational corporation an instrument of irresponsible private economic power, or even an agent of economic ‘imperialism’ by its home country. Others view it as an international carrier of advanced management science and technology, an agent for the global transmission of cultural values, bringing closer the day when a common set of ideals will unite mankind.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The primary difficulty is the problem of determining what the interest of business is.At any given time, business corporations are split on many national issues; there does not appear to be a monolithic ‘business interest.’ Thus, petroleum companies have opposed liberal oil import quotas, while petrochemical companies have favored them in order to obtain less expensive feedstocks; steel companies have sought restraints upon imports of foreign steel, whereas automobile companies and other large users of steel have fought them; and even with respect to such matters as labor union legislation or antipollution regulation, businessmen are far from presenting a united front because firms in some industries are much more deeply affected than those in other industries.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A static technology is, however, almost inconceivable. It runs so strongly against established drives in American society as to be practically impossible. So long as we are thinking beings, we will find new ways to increase the productivity of work! The basic point, however, is that economic growth is needed to improve the quality of life. A rise in the GNP, taken by itself, is neither good nor bad. Everything depends upon what kind of production has increased, its costs to society, and who benefits from it. What people now want and need is resource-conserving, pollution-free growth—growth that does not harm the environment and demands less of the earth’s limited resources.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Foreign oil companies suffered major expropriations of their property during the postwar period, usually without payment of full compensation to the private owners. These episodes—the most significant were in Algeria, Ceylon, Cuba, Egypt , Iran, Libya, and Peru—followed by many years the first major oil industry expropriation by the Bolshevik government of Russia in 1918 and a second major expropriation of foreign oil properties by the Mexican government in 1938. All illustrated the great latent power of governments over the international oil companies and the reality of the political risks inherent in the industry.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After World War II, foreign government levies on the incomes of private oil companies were progressively and substantially increased. This was true of both royalty and income tax rates… Later, the 50 percent rate of taxing foreign oil income was materially increased in many nations… Colombia’s oil law of 1962 changed the tax rate to 68 percent of net income from production. Contract agreements with Indonesia provided that 60 percent of profits would go to the government… The oil companies were unable to pass on all the increased costs per barrel to petroleum consumers after 1957, because of the redundancy of supplies.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Expropriation and nationalization of private oil properties, and the growth of government oil companies, extended public ownership in oil. However, the primary result of postwar government petroleum policies was to enhance competition in the industry. Governments encouraged new entrants, which diffused the structure of the industry. The number of competing firms increased, and the market positions of the largest international oil companies declined, reducing concentration. As the entrants developed more concession areas, the growth of petroleum supply relative to demand accelerated, intensifying competition in both crude oil and product markets, and depressing prices and rates of return on investment.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The emerging censorship of political payments by U.S. business corporations is a potentially important, but little noted, aspect of the recent controversies about these payments. The operating behavior of American business overseas is becoming a new dimension of the public regulations of business. Until recent years, this regulation was concerned with such matters as healthy working conditions for employees, safe and reliable products, and enforcing competition. The disclosure of political payment abroad has led federal agencies to increase still further their role as arbiters of business behavior.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The media have tended to emphasize the notion that it is the American company that initiates the bribe, without laying any emphasis on the fact that around the world, for hundreds of years, companies from other countries have been making payments and paying bribes, and that usually the reason they have done so is that they have been solicited or extorted by politicians and government employees. To point this out is not to negate the blame for making the payments and paying the bribes, but simply to make it clear that in many, if not most, cases the payments are made under duress. All other things being equal, an American business manager would rather avoid the costs of bribes.”
Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source