Today I had the chance to read an article that compared entrepreneurs to mercenaries [1], which is about as left-handed a compliment as someone can give without desiring to give deliberate offense. However valid one considers the comparison to be, the fact that someone can make a facile and open comparison between an independent businessman and a soldier of fortune in one of the most corrupt professions known to mankind suggests the sort of serious image problem that businessmen have in this present society. Whether this comparison is just or not, it does present a serious indication of a massive need to build a better reputation in the eyes of those who follow business.

Being a mercenary is not generally reputed as an honorable profession. I happen to have had at least one mercenary in my own fairly close family (an uncle of mine did prison guard duty in Iraq some years ago as a merc, which says about all you need to know about that), and it just so happens that mercenaries have been the subject of some personal research of my own. Mercenaries are generally related to military efforts that do not have the support of one’s own populace. Whether one is looking at the petty Italian princedoms and their interminable conflicts and the cruel fate of their own mercenaries, one has to realize that occasionally mercenary service is unjust to the mercenary, whose power and competence may be a threat to his employers who consider him a hired gun (or sword, in the old days) and nothing more.

Among the most notable examples of mercenary service in the course of American history is the Hessians who served in the British army given the unpopularity of British imperialism back home. Unless there are serious ideological and philosophical differences that lead to a high degree of political furor (like, say, the American Civil War, or most civil wars in general), it is generally a difficult matter for people to summon up the hatred in their hearts to do battle against their relatives or those people they view as kindred or neighbors. Mercenaries have the advantage in that their loyalty is to the person or group paying their salary, but as a result they have less of the ideological passion of someone whose loyalty is to a cause or to their own country and are more prone to dissatisfaction when inevitable logistical problems crop up.

It should not be surprising that mercenaries have sought to change their name over the past couple of centuries to avoid being tarred with the brush of being cold-hearted killers for hire, prostituting their obvious skills for filthy lucre. What was once considered a profession of some honor in the days of Gustavus Adolphus and Albrecht von Wallenstien, a professional soldier of some competence and skill and some respect in the world has become a profession whose dishonor requires a great deal of money to overcome in the eyes of most people, and a great deal of disrespect among those of a more idealistic bent. Whether one is dealing with military consultants like an Emil Korner in Chile or someone of less spectacularly corrupt and dishonorable dealings, even those elite soldiers sent to spread the ways of war of a successful military often fall under condemnation for being mere mercenaries, loyal only so long as they profit handsomely from the nations they claim to serve.

For businessmen to be compared to this sort of profession suggests that there has been an essential decline in the trust that people have for businessmen to fulfill part of their duty. It is to be expected that businessmen will seek their own profits and their own well-being through their business, and no fair-minded person would begrudge someone the desire to make a profit based on their own information and charisma, so long as they served the interests of their customers and performed services and provided goods that would be of worth to society at large. The difficulty comes when people are seen as loyal only to their own interests and greatly disinterested in providing loyal or honorable service to others. For businessmen to be considered as kindred to mercenaries suggests a massive mistrust in those engaged in business, a lack of trust in their essential decency and desire to perform service out of any motives greater than mere self-interest.

This is a significant difficulty. Adam Smith, famous for his book The Wealth of Nations, also wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments in which he described the sort of moral and ethical values a society needed to successfully engage in free market capitalism. All too often, it appears, businessmen in our present age are believed to see human beings only for their market value and not as worthwhile ends in themselves, beings worthy of dignity for being created in the image and likeness of God apart from any economic value of their labor. Whether this charge is just or not, the fact that it is so openly and commonly believed suggests that business interests need to do a better job of showing their concern for humanity and not merely their own personal well-being in an age of great scarcity and insecurity, where mistrust runs rampant.

[1] http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130712161133-40578-entrepreneur-as-a-mercenary?trk=tod-home-art-large_0