Predatory Pricing. Predatory Lending. Predators in the board rooms of America. What are we to make of that?
First, let's consider what a predator is. In the natural world there are basically four strategies by which organisms sustain themselves. Perhaps the most primitive are those that survive by consuming and processing raw chemicals. What we call iron bacteria, as well as those that produce sulphur, along with the lichen that thrive on rock and the constituents of the air, are good examples of organisms that bridge the gap between animate and inanimate existence.
Another category of organisms depends on other living things for their support, but neither changes nor harms them in any way. Nor is their behavior reciprocal. That is, what we call the host is neither better nor worse off as a result. Spanish moss is a good example. It perches on the branches of trees and bushes to get full exposure to sunlight and air, but takes no sustenance from them.
Parasites, on the other hand, typically cause severe injury, if not death, and, though not always, a prolonged period of suffering. The suffering isn't intended; it's just a natural consequence of the reality that the parasite's own survival would be threatened if the victim died too soon. This is not, however, a problem for those organisms that have evolved to exploit the next level of complexity on the scale of resource acquisition--predation.
The predator, being mobile and able to move around on its own, can afford to destroy its victim on the spot, consume as much as it requires, and then move on to another venue, leaving the remains for other organisms to scavenge. Which, in the grand scheme of things, makes the predator a useful addition to the repertoir of how organisms sustain themselves.
Predation is destructive and the life of the predator tends to be brutish and short. Which is why, even when they are not hunted by humans, the numbers of the largest predatory species are comparatively small. Much of the energy a predator spends in the pursuit of its prey is actually wasted. Because only a small portion is usually able to be consumed at one sitting, even when she's sharing with her young.
Indeed, the survival of large predators depends on their ability to share, to engage in reciprocal behavior, at least with the members of the biologically related group. And, while such sharing behavior, an elaboration of symbiotic relationships, also occurs in such diverse organisms as bees and bats, it seems to have reached its ultimate expression in the exchange and trade of goods and services by homo sapiens.
As the human brain has evolved to acquire the mental ability to recollect and anticipate behavior, the exchange of goods and services as a voluntary transaction has become a conscious act. In other words, the market in which these voluntary transactions for mutual benefit occur can be said to be the consequence of the evolutionary increase in the capacity of the human brain and the elaboration of its faculties. Trade and exchange have replaced the predatory instinct.
So why are we still beset by human predators? Why, more specifically, is predatory behavior increasing among supposedly educated and fully socialized individuals? Since it's quite common for stressed populations to revert to more primitive strategies, a sort of catch-as-catch-can existence to sustain themselves is to be expected from individuals whose mental capacities may have been reduced because of poor nutrition, environmental toxins or even parasitic infestation. Lacking the mental capacity to anticipate their needs and share in the allocation of the resources they require to survive, such deprived populations have no alternative but to resort to the predatory mode.
That's obviously not what's driving predatory pricing strategies, predatory lending and the predatory acquisitions, consolidations and dismemberment that's become characteristic of corporate board rooms. Indeed, destruction not survival is the issue and, unlike the predatory model we observe in other species, homo sapiens almost uniquely preys on his own kind. It's almost as if, having become conscious of the forces that destroy, some humans feel compelled to destroy each other. For no other reason than that they can.
Perhaps it's nothing more than the serial killer syndrome amplified by the access to like-minded individuals whose accumulation of wealth makes it possible to orchestrate destruction on a grand scale. Are we to conclude that the epitomy of human evolution is the elaboration of predation into the art of destruction--i.e. what we commonly refer to as murder when it's perpetrated by lesser mortals who don't have access to the assets of the corporate world.