Great piece today in the Times (of London) asking why businesses are not more vigorous in defending themselves and why they do not demand that people, as individuals, stop looking to the ‘blame culture’ and demand that people take more responsibility for their actions:
So where is the business voice telling us that we the public – egged on by politicians, the media and NGOs – have got it all wrong? Where are the companies fighting back at the wilder allegations of publicity-hungry campaign groups, self-interested organisations and junk scientists? I’ll tell you where they are: they are at corporate social responsibility conferences, “engaging” with other people’s agendas.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with listening. Companies must always listen, learn and seek to improve. But this ‘engagement’ is too often a one-way street: the terms of engagement are dictated by others. The ‘corporate responsibility’ agenda in particular is dominated by anti-business campaigners. And their style is not generally to engage; it is to criticise, demand and oppose. This is understandable: NGOs, like the media and politicians, all thrive on conflict. Quiet and constructive dialogue is rarely in their interests
Amen, brother. One quick observation from me on this is that the litigation culture, which is still far worse in the United States, has spread to our shores; also, the general desire to blame others for our misfortune is possibly also a side-effect of the Welfare State and encouraged by the MSM.
Nice to see such forthright sanity from a major newspaper.
I would say the answer is pretty obvious. Big business is in only favour of freedom and responsibilty when there is a buck to be made. Otherwise they are quite happy to go along with the “corporate responsibity” agenda as it leads to Government regulation, which acts as barrier to entry and entrenches their position.
Considering the ever-growing tax take and the bungling ineptitude of the State in buying goods and services, the private sector in the form of big corporations are keeping schtum so they can get a turn at the trough.
In some ways New Labour have managed to tame Big Business by not fighting them but getting them hooked on State largesse.
That, and yes, all the red tape slows down new entrants and acts as a brake on more nimble competitors.
True enough, the corporate state always suits the big players.
While it is true that Big Business has dovetailed with Big Government, it should always be remembered that Big Government existed first, for its own purposes and agendas. The Liberals tend to give a free pass to Big Government because they agree with the agenda. Libertarians shouldn’t come off similarly. We can bemoan the creation of a corporo-fascistic state, and allocate blame to the Business side of the equation, but the greatest amount needs to be given to the State and it shouldn’t be left out as some sort of “well that’s a given” because a lot of people to don’t think so, or care to frame it that way. It really amazes me how many people wilt in fear of the Microsofts of the world when the Federal Government is Microsoft times a thousand, and can shoot your ass or haul it off to cinderblock box.
the general desire to blame others for our misfortune is possibly also a side-effect of the Welfare State
Possibly?
Why don’t they defend themselves?
Because they have been disarmed.
What is “Business”, big or little? People.
And since they were children, all of these people have been taught that profit is evil, that private interests are suspect, that ownership is theft, that wealth is stolen from the poor, that strength is built on the weak, that ability and effort deserve nothing but contempt, that weakness and incompetence are a claim upon every breath they take, every drop of sweat they shed.
You know all this. You have heard it from every pulpit, from every politician, from every moralist, from every academy, from every demagogue, from every newscast, from every editorial page, from every red faced activist who uses all the tools provided by men and women of courage and intellectual effort to condemn them for all they have done to those who have done nothing.
For centuries uncounted and uncountable, mankind has lived in the realm of the “Red Queen”—a realm in which morality is handed down from a place that humans do not inhabit, proclaimed by prophets who despise all life on this earth, and interpreted by holy men who long for the oblivion of death, and the rewards of a Wonderland that they have seen only in feverish dreams and demented visions.
We live in a world in which suffering is praised and pleasure demonized. In which reality is condemned and nightmares prayed into existence.
In which men and women who have poured their entire lives into creative effort, providing innovations, jobs, products, services, medicines, opportunities, knowledge, and creating the wealth which surrounds us in a cocoon undreamt of by the greatest emperors and kings of history, are scorned and derided.
In which panderers and emotional blackmailers use every weakness and failing of the human spirit as stepping stones to power and influence, and then lord it over anyone who they can ensnare in byzantine legal rules and obscure regulations, whose only true purpose is the achievement of power at any cost, by any means, and for the sake of having it.
But, in the land of the Red Queen, those who devote themselves to “public service” are exalted as compassionate, while those who create private wealth are despised as greedy, even as a century passes in which the graves of the victims of compassionate public servants cannot be counted, while the benefits of creative effort have extended not only the length of life itself, but provided a world in which ordinary working people can acquire education, experience travel, and live into their 70’s and 80’s in a technological web which ties together the populations of all the seven continents in an economic and cultural global community.
Why don’t they defend themselves?
Why should they have to?
veryretired seems to have been influenced by Ayn Rand – but that does not mean he is wrong (the lady was often correct).
There is also the matter of FEAR.
If a business (either an owner managed business or a corporation) started to denounce statism and the “agenda” of the various politically favoured groups there are all sorts of ways the statists can hit back at it – tax audits (even if all taxes have been paid an “investigation” can cripple a business), or “anti trust” investiongations, or a thousand other ways.
The leftist businessman (someone who is in business but has the attitudes that veryretired describes) does exist – indeed most billionaries in the United States seem to be leftists (it is not just Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Peter Lewis, George Soros, Mrs Heinz-Kerry, Marc Cuban and so on), but many business people who are, in private, filled with contempt for the regulations and welfare programs go all soft in public.
It is fear. Not just fear of alienating customers (customers could not care less if, say, the C.E.O. of Walmart came out against government health care – they shop on price and quality, not the political opinions of the C.E.O.) fear of making the powerful individuals and groups see you as a target.
The joke is for all the “me toism” of businessmen, the politicals target them anyway.