Just the Facebook mindset - or is our whole economy becoming sociopathic?

John Naughton quotes from his own Observer column today over at Memex 1.1:

The truth is that companies such as Facebook are basically the corporate world’s equivalent of sociopaths, that is to say individuals who are completely lacking in conscience and respect for others. In her book The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout of Harvard medical school tries to convey what goes on in the mind of such an individual. “Imagine,” she writes, “not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern of the wellbeing of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.”

Welcome to the Facebook mindset.

And in the light of some of the thoughts I've been having recently, I wonder if this profile couldn't be applied to our whole economy.  As the Martha Stout quote shows us, the very fact that a company not only as large as Facebook but also as intricately folded into many of our daily lives is so psychologically disconnected from the feelings of others really doesn't bode well for the future.

And not because I believe companies should show a moral side.  After all, Milton Friedman disabused us a long time ago of this notion (the bold is mine):

[...] That is why, in my book Capitalism and Freedom, I have called it a "fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

Which, in the light of recent crises as well as their apparent causes, would be a rather big "if" to presuppose, don't you think?

No.  In reality, what worries me far more than the simple and long-held thesis of corporate psychopathy is the fact that social media and web companies which behave in the way that both Friedman and now Naughton describe can interfere with and influence the behaviours of the people who use their products and services.

It does, after all, seem inconceivable that we can escape being fashioned by the tools we use so intimately.

What worries me, then, aren't the sociopaths who are populating our business world.  What worries me, then, is that very shortly a wider society will begin to join them.