Can Business Not Be Personal?

"It's nothing personal, just business" might be a common or stereotypical phrase of someone shrugging off a course of action undertaken in the name of money and access , especially if they had to trample on someone to achieve that financial goal.  Popularity of course does not entail logical correctness.  The idea behind the phrase is philosophically nothing but bullshit on multiple levels.  On one hand, if an action truly is immoral, whether there was personal malice driving it or whether the outcome is pragmatically beneficial does not override this.  On the other hand, business cannot not be personal.

What is a person's motivation for engaging in business as a merchant, employer, or employee?  Is it to achieve psychological or lifestyle security by amassing wealth?  Is it to impress others, as stupid as this is?  Is it to feel better about themself either by living up to cultural pressures about success or being accomplished as an individual?  The exact motivation or blend of motivations is not necessarily the same from one person to another, but desiring any of these or other things is an inherently personal matter of subjective intention.  Desire for security, fame, and accomplishment is inherently personal, as is hoping to make a positive impact through business efforts; all desire is subjective, even if the desire is otherwise for something that itself transcends mere subjectivity.

Subjective matters like ego, psychological insecurity, or the longing to impress others are personal!  It is logically impossible for someone to have a fully impersonal approach to business.  I do not mean that their philosophy of business is automatically tainted by logical fallacies because no one has to make assumptions or hold to errors rather than align with the objective truths of reason.  I am referring not to their beliefs about business, but to what drives them to involve themself in business at all.  Perhaps they simply want to make money to avoid starvation or dying of thirst or exposure to the elements (homelessness), which although it is about physical needs broadly relevant to human life rather than sheer individualistic fulfillment is still necessarily personal.

Some motivations might be more personally and introspectively charged, absolutely.  It is possible that one person feels driven to succeed in business to provide for their family they deeply love.  Another could be devoted to contradicting stereotypes about their workplace potential on the basis of gender, race, or class.  Others could be pathetic slaves to greed out of commitment to the delusions of egoism or materialism.  While hoping to make money for the sake of endless profit increases is obviously asinine (due to the impossibility of infinite growth and the stupidity living for a social construct like money over pure logical truths), it is no exception to business always being personal.  Exceptions to this are logically impossible.

There is and can be no such thing as business not being personal.  Logically, it is impossible for anything contrary to be true.  Nevertheless, most people are not rationalists and thus have no true knowledge of necessary truths, and many times the phrase "It's nothing personal, just business" is used only to deflect moral criticism anyway.  As if any actual moral obligations could be just sidestepped because they are inconvenient for your business practices!  If someone ever uses this phrase, they have made themselves vulnerable to being humiliated by total refutation, and confronting them about their stupidity could ironically hurt them very personally.  Thinking themselves cold and detached or at least intending to project this persona while avoiding accountability, they leave themself wide open to very personal reckoning.