Category: poverty

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Peace and War, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On a LinkedIn discussion board, someone asked, “So, why has bettering the world become a mantra for a new generation of entrepreneurs?”

This sparked a very lively discussion, mixing the cynics and the optimists.

You can view this discussion here (you might have to join the group first).

My first comment was quick and straightforward, discussing my new work at Business For a Better World:

I’m 57 years old, been in business since 1981, and my business has *always* been about fostering a better world. This year, I took it further, beginning a campaign to show business how solving hunger, poverty, war, climate catastrophe, etc. is not only the right thing to do, but can be highly profitable (and we actually already have a lot of the technology to make it possible).

But as others responded, I felt a need to go deeper, and I want to share my responses to two of them with you:

Tim asked, “…If these entrepreneurs are so hot on giving to humanity, why not put their technologies in the public domain? There’s a topic for debate: Which is the better outcome, the Gates Foundation or Wikipedia?…”

Tim  – great question! The Gates example has always interested me, in that it follows the pattern of 100-150 years ago, when predatory ubercapitalists like Carnegie and Rockefeller began to seek out a higher purpose later in life and became uberphilanthropists–yes, some of Microsoft’s practices were quite predatory under Gates’ leadership. I can’t think of an equally prominent example in the years between the “Robber Barons” and Gates. (I also think Melinda may have had a lot to do with Gates finding HIS higher purpose–but he has fully embraced it and discovered it provides meaning in his life.) Most towns in my area of New England are still using little public libraries built with Carnegie money.

Warren Buffett is another very interesting example, but his choices and motivations, I suspect, were very different. Buffett never seemed to care personally about accumulating wealth to “better” his own life. He still lives in the simple ranch house he bought in the 1950s. And as far as I know, Berkshire Hathaway under his leadership was not a predatory company. It didn’t shock me when he gave away most of is fortune–to the Gates Foundation (which kind of brings this discussion full-circle).

But I propose that it is possible to be socially conscious from the get-go AND do quite well financially, and that getting wealthy is not a sin. Prominent examples include ice cream superstars Ben Cohen and Jerry Silverman, Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, Anita Roddick of The Body Shop, and many others. I suspect the Chicken Soup guys (Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen) are in this category; they do not shy away from the trappings of wealth–but they also find many ways to use their wealth to better the world. Jack I know for sure started from very humble beginnings; I have no clue about Mark’s early years, nor can I quickly find anything in public sources.

Jennifer commented, “…The world is in crisis – how do we milk it for all it has now people are focusing on the bad guys that have put the world in crisis. ‘We make the world seem like we care’ – new market. But hang on – ‘we kind of do care – well some of us anyway’ – but hang on ‘the global village concept doesn’t seem to be working’ – Ok; so now what?

Let’s make the world betterment program a thing for entrepreneurs – get rich while you increase people hopes even though those hopes are false…”

Jennifer  – Yours is one of several cynical posts in this discussion, but yours is ambivalent while the others are pretty much set in stone. So I choose to engage with you. I think we need to harness the cynicism and skepticism about business’ ulterior motives to create the action we want, despite our suspicion of their motives. For me, seeking personal wealth has never been as important as making the world better. My millionaire colleagues would laugh at my income. Let them laugh! As long as I can motivate them to make a difference.

I am personally very cynical about the ability to solve our biggest problems–hunger and poverty, war and violence, catastrophic climate change–based on the ways we’ve always done it. Too often, we’ve tried to motivate on guilt, fear, and shame–and it doesn’t work.

So I’m taking a leaf from the libertarians and ubercapitalists and attempting to motivate based on self-interest. If your goal is personal material wealth and I can show you how to realize that goal by seizing the opportunity to make money, and the work that governments and NGOs have failed to do gets done, then fine, take your fortune and go live in your big house. Think about a super-profit-driven company like Walmart: not exactly a tree-hugger hangout. But Walmart realized years ago that there was a lot of money to be made selling organic foods, low-watt lightbulbs and other green products–and a lot of money to be saved implementing green into its own operations, deeply. I have many issues with Walmart in other areas, but on the environment, I give them BIG props. Working from the profit motive, they have done more to spread green consciousness *and* green *practices* through society than I have in a lifetime of speaking and writing and consulting.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, media-general, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

A libertarian participant on a LinkedIn discussion group posted,

how does business do anything to make you miserable ??

dont like their products then dont buy them

without biz making those things you would [be] naked growing your own vegetables in the wilderness

My response:

William: I know you espouse libertarianism but I don’t think of you as naive. I was once a member of the Libertarian Party, and still see a great deal of merit in libertarian approach to foreign policy as well as civil liberties; I would love to see Ron Paul as US Secretary of Defense, because if HE were willing to go to war, the situation must be dire indeed. But when you write,

You come across as VERY naive. Or are you pulling our collective (yes, a loaded word in libertarian circles) chain?

Consider…there are many corporations that do great things, create reasonably enjoyable workplaces, and work to heal the planet. BUT, worldwide, there are others that 1) create utter misery for their employees (think about the sweatshop workers in the factory that burned in Bangladesh a year or two ago); 2) pollute and destroy the neighborhoods they’re located in, causing severe adverse health effects for their neighbors and others; 3) rape the earth for their raw materials and then dump the toxic leftovers back on the poor, beleaguered planet, taking no responsibility for their actions.

You will say to #1 that no one forces people to work in slave conditions; they could just go off and start their own business if they don’t want to work for “The Man.” I did that, and from your ID line, it looks like you did, too. But that’s disingenuous. Not everybody can think through that alternative, not everybody has access to even a sliver of capital. If you’re making barely enough to keep your family from starving and from being thrown out of your one-room shack, even a few bucks will be too much.

I started my own business with $200. I was pretty poor at the time, but I did have the $200 (and even a bit more) in the bank. And I had to survive during the very lean start-up phase. At the time (1981), I knew almost nothing about marketing and was in a community that had little use for the service I was offering. I made $300 the first 6 months—before we moved to a more supportive community—and lived on a mix of rapidly depleting savings, odd-job income, and what my wife-to-be brought in from her meager job at a restaurant. But I had that luxury! I had a couple of thousand in the bank that I could draw from. Many people in developing countries, or even in our own inner cities and poor rural areas, do not. If they have no job and they start a business that isn’t immediately viable, how do they eat?

I would have more respect for the libertarian position if it accepted responsibility for #s 2 and 3. But libertarians discredit themselves with me when they claim that it’s their right to plunder the earth because they got there first, and that it’s perfectly OK to extract the resources, pollute and dump wastes just because of that arbitrary fact.I don’t object to profit; I make a chunk of my living writing and speaking about how to be a better capitalist, after all. But I have no respect for businesses that claim they have every right to privatize their profit while externalizing—dare I say socializing—the harm. A true libertarian would see overharvesting and pollution/dumping as theft from others, forcing them to incur economic costs to clean up someone else’s mess. But somehow, the libertarians I know sound a theme more like “we got here first, too bad for the rest of you, and the mess is not our problem.”

Libertarians often cite economist Milton Friedman on the social responsibility of business to maximize profits. However, even Friedman saw a need to limit business. I went back to the source: his New York Times Magazine essay of September 13, 1970. And to my amazement, I found that Friedman added some major conditions to his remarks. Here’s what he actually said:

In a free-enterprise, private-property sys­tem, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct re­sponsibility to his employers. That responsi­bility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while con­forming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. (emphasis added)

At the very end of the essay, he quotes from his own textbook and repeats the qualifier, phrased a bit differently:

“there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use [its] 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.” (emphasis added once more)

To put it another way, in this essay, Friedman was totally willing to concede that self-rule doesn’t always work in the business world. Government is needed to keep business from exercising its self-interest at the expense of others’ self-interest and the wide society’s interest. Whether it’s a retailer avoiding the cost of health insurance by paying its workers so little that they qualify for government assistance or a manufacturer spewing poisons into the air and water and land, expecting that the government—in other words, the taxpayers: we the people—to clean it up,  I would definitely count as “deception or fraud”: the externalizing of responsibility for the mess.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Trends/News, poverty, privacy, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Very interesting post on Business Week: “Can Small Businesses Start a Gay Rights Movement in Mississippi?”

I totally support nondiscrimination in any public accommodation or retail setting—and I’m delighted to see the “We don’t discriminate. If you’re buying, we’re selling” campaign in Mississippi. But at the risk of alienating some of my friends, l think service businesses–especially values-based ones—are a different case. Before you jump all over me—read the language I send to new prospects for my marketing and consulting services:

Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.

Notice that this language doesn’t discriminate against a person or class of people–but it certainly does discriminate against a set of beliefs.

Now, if I reserve that privilege for myself, how can I possibly justify withholding it from someone else who runs a service business and has different values than mine?

Also, there’s a provider quality issue. If I were forced to write a piece of marketing copy for a product whose values I despised, I would do a terrible job. Even if I consciously tried to do my best, it would come out shoddy and insincere, because I wouldn’t believe in what I was promoting. By the same token, I can’t imagine why a same-sex couple would WANT to hire a homophobic wedding photographer (one of the examples cited in the article); the pictures will be terrible.

If you’re renting a room, buying a sandwich, riding a bus, patronizing a theme park…yes, you should have the right to be served. But if a service provider is being asked to use specialized skills to support a cause that service provider finds morally repugnant, I’m not at all sure we should coerce that behavior.

Please comment below. I’d love to get some good dialog going on this.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environmenl, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, Peace and War, People Helping People, poverty, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,

Watch this video about the Copenhagen Wheel, a device that captures and stores energy from cyclists pedaling and coasting, and supplements pedal power on the uphills or over long distances. And then read a few of the comments.

To me, this is brilliant technology! First, it makes biking—and particularly bicycle commuting over distances of 20 to 50 miles—an attractive option for tens of thousands of people who’ve felt unwilling to try it before. That, in turn, reduces the number of cars on the road, which has dozens of advantages to the planet and to our pocketbooks. Second, it makes it possible for the moderate cyclist (like me) to go much farther by bike.

A lot of the comments are angry that this will disrupt their exercise. I think they’re not thinking about it the right way. Instead of blaming a machine for interfering with their workout, think about the ability to bike instead of drive to good riding places some distance away, or to bike much farther distances to explore an area farther out.

I do ride for exercise. And I do face a BIG hill when I go out my door. I’ve learned to manage it, but when I first moved to that area, it was very tough. Something like this would have been a nice transition as I learned to conquer that tough hill.

And for the exercise-only bikers, I have one more suggestion: write to the company and tell them you want a manual override option: an off switch, in other words. Then you have the boost when you need it.

Let’s apply this kind of creativity to every aspect of our lives! We could not only solve climate change but war, poverty, and other global issues. I wish this company much success!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

I’ve always enjoyed Bruce Springsteen’s work: his hard-driving melodies, brilliant working-class lyrics, sense of justice, and enormous passion.

And last night, seeing the amazing movie “Springsteen & I,” I’ll add—he has a huge heart. 40+ years into his career, he clearly remembers his roots, and he’s willing to get down with ordinary folks. He has not let stardom go to his head.

And it was really nice to see a celebrity musician movie that was not all about a slow decline due to drugs and/or alcohol. This movie, much of it shot by amateurs—fans giving tribute to The Boss and remembering special moments or personal encounters—is a tribute not only to the passion his fans have for him, but also for the passion he has for his fans. He comes across as very human, very likable, and a hell of a performer. And it says a lot about his character that several of the musicians in the concert footage from the 1970s are still in his band.

Watching this working-class hero in action, I remembered the 1984 attempt by President Ronald Reagan and columnist George Will to co-opt Springsteen for the right wing, and Springsteen would have none of it. The big flag on the cover of “Born in the USA” fooled them.

The song, of course, is a Vietnam veteran’s lament about his bleak economic prospects in the age of Reagan—with this lyric, among others:

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says “Son if it was up to me”

Click here for full lyrics to “Born in the USA”, along with a nice write-up of the kerfluffle.

Of course, the marketer in me is always alert when I interact with popular culture. And wearing that hat, let me note that yes, Bruce is a man of the people, but he’s also a very smart marketer. Springsteen has fully documented his own career, making it easy for the producers of this movie to find footage of the exact moment a fan is talking about—whether inviting up a show-hogging Elvis impersonator or jamming on the street with a local busker.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Diversity, poverty, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

Today, I am proud to be an American.

When I attended my first same-sex commitment ceremony, sometime around 1980, I never thought I’d see so much progress, so fast. In 1982, I went to the first LGB pride march in Northampton, Massachusetts—and some of the marchers wore bags over their heads to protect their idenities.

In 2005, just 23 years later, my own state of Massachusetts became the first to legalize same-sex marriage. And now, with today’s Supreme Court decisions in favor of gay marriage, several major ripples happen:

  • California will likely become the 13th state to legalize marriage equality, and that will mean about 30 percent of the US population will live in a place where partners of the same gender can marry
  • The wretched DOMA, the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (I prefer to call it the Desecration of Marriage Act) is invalidated, and the numerous discriminatory practices it enshrined are nullified—creating economic equality for same-sex relationships in such matters as inheritance, hospital visitation rights, and spousal benefits (DOMA is the worst kind of compromise—the kind that makes no one happy)
  • The US is well on its way to joining the 14 other countries that have legalized gay marriage, and thus joined the 21st century on this issue: not just the progressive hotspots of Northern Europe, but even two countries in South America (with Brazil expected to join them soon) and one in Africa

So what does it mean? Living in a state where same-sex marriage has been legal for 8 years, I can tell you that it has broken down a lot of barriers. When people realize that the same-sex couples in their community are just neighbors, working with them on the block beautification committee or school parent association—struggling with the same issues, sharing the same triumphs—a lot of the prejudice goes away. Just as we’ve seen a huge change in relations between races after the legal apartheid of the segregated south went away, we’ll see a gradual dissipation of prejudice as people of different sexual orientations rub shoulders in multiple contexts.

Congratulations to the Supreme Court, to all my lesbian and gay friends, to the Obama administration that urged this decision—and to my country.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

With a billion people suffering hunger, two billion not getting all the nutrients they need, and another billion suffering obesity, it’s clear that the food status quo needs a shakeup. Food sustainability blogger Danielle Nirenberg (@DaniNierenberg) offers 13 change-the-food-system resolutions to start 2013 in her latest article on Huffington Post.

To her very good list, I’d add a few more:

  • Recognizing that we can grow great food in adequate quantities without chemicals, genetic modification (GMO), irradiation, or monocropping
  • Remembering that organic food is the true heritage food—all there was, for most of human history
  • Emphasizing localism and freshness—eating most food near where it’s grown
  • Reducing meat consumption—not just because a plant-based diet is healthier, but also because you can get seven times the food value from the same amount of land, and thus its a key strategy in ending hunger

My list could be much longer—but I’d like to ask YOU to write your favorite in the comment section.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Diversity, People Helping People, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , ,

Not many politicians, even progressive ones with a strong sustainability commitment, would try to live on today’s food stamp budget. Hats off to Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker for this bold step–showing his colleagues what it’s actually like to be poor.

Of course, he can go back to his regular life any time he wants. An option not open to very many of those who live on SNAP assistance.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Demographics/Psychographics, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

Our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, Massachusetts, runs a political column by a local conservative, Dr. Jay Fleitman. I know him a little; our kids went to preschool together, back in the day.

And thus I can say that Jay is a bright guy—and in person, quite pleasant. But you wouldn’t know it from his columns, which closely parrot the right-wing talking points of Fox News bloviators and the more extreme Republican politicians, whether or not they have a basis in fact. His writing is very typical of those who claim to speak for Republican voters these days.

Sometimes, I write letters to the editor debunking his statements. But I can’t rebut yesterday’s column that way, because I recently submitted a letter on another topic; the quota is one per month. Fortunately, I have no quota on how often I blog.

His column was called “Not an Accidental Republican.”

He writes:

Unemployment is crushing in the black population after four years of this president…yet 97 percent of blacks voted for Obama.

Where did this crushing unemployment come from? From the wildly unregulated chaos of Wall Street under George W. Bush, undermining both the Main Street economy—rewarding “job creator” companies through tax loopholes for “creating” jobs overseas—and the housing market, writing mortgages that no reasonable person could justify and frequently yanking those mortgages without anything even close to due process (often in communities of color). Bush inherited the strongest economy of my lifetime, if I’m not mistaken—and, not coincidentally, a country at peace. He gave the megacorporate multinational foxes not just the keys to the henhouse, but to the entire farm. And he wrecked the economy, the peace, and our status among nations.

Has Obama fixed the economy? No. He’s made a start. But he’s too timid, too much of a closet 1970’s-style Republican to do what needs to be done. A massive federal jobs program focused on clean energy and infrastructure repair would be a long step forward, but he’s not willing to take it. (I’ve been advocating such a plan for years.)

My wife has another great solution to the unemployment problem: provide tax breaks around job creation only when a job is created in the U.S. Voila—jobs in the private sector, in this country.

Describing the reaction of a young Democrat who was interviewing him, Jay writes,

I think that he was taken aback by the perspective that there is nothing particularly enlightened or sophisticated in the notion of a big centralized government intruding widely in society, that this is an old model found throughout human history with varying degrees of despotism.

That which makes the American experiment so unique was the founding of a government with a primary directive of protecting the degrees of freedom of its citizens. And yes, it is his political party that is the party of enlarging government.

Hmmm, let’s see…what’s the biggest expansion of federal government authority and what are the most obvious instances of U.S. government despotism in recent years? Oh yes, the Department of Homeland Security including the TSA…the imprisonment without trial, waterboarding and other torture at places like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram…the crackdown on dissent at home in violation of the First Amendment…and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan—sovereign nations—under false pretenses. Who was president at the time? Well, what do you know; it was George W. Bush. Why didn’t Jay speak out against these appalling attacks on liberty?

Once again, Obama’s failings here are in not doing enough. He broke his promise to close Guantanamo, and he has taken his time about winding down the wars—to name two among many examples.

By the way, I asked, if we don’t have the fiscal conservatism of Republicans, then who did he think was going to be stuck with the $16 trillion debt? It’s not my generation, as we’ll be skating into Medicare, Social Security and retirement. It will be his generation, so what were they possibly thinking with over 70 percent voting for Obama?

Again, this is the Republicans’ debt. Bill Clinton left not just a balanced budget but an actual surplus, which Bush utterly squandered (wars and attacks on civil liberties are expensive, and so was the decision to slash revenue). If Republicans are serious about ending that debt (which would be a good idea), why are they so resistant to raising revenue?

During the Republican presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, when both Jay and I were born, the top-earner tax rate was 91 percent; it was 50 percent during Reagan’s first term. So why is it considered so burdensome to bring the top income tax rate back from today’s 36 percent up to the 39.6 where it had been under Clinton (a time of enormous, unparalleled prosperity)? Also, let’s not forget that the income for many high-net-worth  U.S. citizens is actually a good deal lower, because much of it is taxed at a much lower rate as capital gains—this is how Mitt Romney got away with paying about 14 percent. And don’t get me started on the way many highly profitable U.S.-based corporations pay little or even nothing in taxes.

The gap between rich and poor in the U.S. right now is beginning to look like some kind of Third-World banana republic. The income inequality, or disparity, is obscene. Social services have been slashed by successive presidents from both parties for 30+ years, since Reagan took office; the poor have been disproportionately hit by programs to shift money from the have-nots to the haves. Taxes for high-income earners are actually far lower in the U.S. than they are in much of Europe; Germany, Portugal, Austria and the United Kingdom all have high-earner tax rates of 45 to 50 percent. France’s 40 percent maximum tax rate kicks in at just €69,783 ($91,083.52) per year.

Why do we need taxes? To pay for three things:

  • Government services, such as roads, traffic lights, police and fire, teachers, food inspectors, and disaster relief—which help rich and poor alike—as well as assorted subsidies to people and economic entities at specific economic strata: food stamps, tax breaks for investment or education, subsidized insurance for nuclear power, etc. etc.
  • War.
  • The debt.

If you support the idea that governments should provide those services, you have to support paying for them—and you cant keep funding them disproportionately out of the torn and ragged pockets of those who have the least. If we stopped getting into wars and funding a military many times larger than even Russia’s, we wouldn’t have created the debt (again, this happened during the Republicans’ watch).

It’s time for people like Jay Fleitman to stop throwing red herrings around, to stop whining about the Democrats who are trying to clean up the Republican mess, and to come together as a nation to solve our problems. A fair revenue program is a logical step to move forward.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Apparently, a lot of people who voted for Romney would like to secede from the United States.

OK–let’s put aside for now the clear absurdity of this…the condemnation of the idea by Republican governors…the enormous difficulty of getting a majority of any state’s citizens to go along with it…the likelihood that this is based in crude racism…and the zero percent success rate of state secession movements in the United States.

Let’s just say they really do secede.

Most Southern states extract more money from the federal treasury than they pay in. And many people in the region work at US military installations or government offices. Everyone in the region relies on federal funding to maintain their transportation infrastructure, civil defense/disaster response And then of course there are those getting by with the help of federal assistance programs such as food stamps and Social Security (the ones Romney derided as “the 47 percent”).

In other words, if the secession movement succeeds, the secessionist states are going to take a huge economic hit. Bob Cesca, in one of the links cited above, says the federal government could simply starve them out and have them rejoin without military action. He’s probably right.

But here’s something perhaps more important that I don’t hear anyone saying:

If the Red states secede, Democrats will have a whopping majority in Congress and could actually get a much more humane, people-centered society in place–which the Red states would have to accept as reality when they come crawling back in a few years, IF the US will have them back.

Wouldn’t it be grand to have a country with a European style single-payer health plan…a solar-powered economy with jobs for all…a military designed to actually defend our shores instead of pursue imperialist wars in countries where we have no justification for our invasion (can you say Iraq?)…an education system that values science and knowledge, and prepares the next generation to play a leadership role in advancing society through technological progress…and so on?

So I say…let ’em Secede!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail