It is not needed, nor fitting here [in discussing the Civil War] that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.
Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
- Abraham Lincoln
I suspect that it's something of a diffusion of responsibility problem. (Responders come to the aid of those bleeding on immensely busy streets rather than on empty streets due to passersby more likely assuming someone else will manage the problem. Factors such as cultures of duty-to-act and litigation risk and good-Samaritan laws can adjust this specific effect.) It's also one of the reasons boards of directors can get pretty ruthless when the result they want has poor moral implications.
One of the factors is that brokers get commissions based on the shares they move, so it does them no good if their clients buy a ton of stock in a solid blue-chip company and then hold onto those shares for a while (a strategy that is served by a plan for long term growth). So they and their dailies-playing clients are served by short term gains. Too much of that and we end up with the default being fuck the public, I want my money.