Social Business, or The Future of Capitalism
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What kind of company do you work for? Does your CEO maximize benefits for himself (it's usually a “him” and a “self”ISH BASTARD), his upper-management, and anyone climbing his ladder? Or does he attempt to maximize benefits for the advancement of the company ITSELF and ALL of the employees, preferably equally?
When capitalism as we know it fails, the knee-jerk reaction is to look to the past, in theory and in practice. We read Marx, mourn the failing Cuban experiment, and generally theorize how we can get the whole communism thing to work anew… I've personally wondered if societies like the U.S.S.R. might have worked better had the internet been prevalent in those days. But history repeats itself only so much. Now we DO have the internet, ever-expanding to eventually and inevitably be a pure voice of the masses who's role in a revolution would render a monolithic, communistic masthead irrelevant. We've needed leadership to help hasten the overthrow of our current system, but it's been happening slowly already, and with the second coming of Christ, err, Obama, we're more quickly on our way.
So what makes us think we should stop well-meaning entrepreneurs doing some really innovative, ethical business and instead try another communist-flavored system that might stifle creativity and stuff predetermined ethics under a government umbrella?
The fact is, there's Social-Capitalistic competition in our market right now, from the acknowledgment that corporations who retain employees and improve their lives also tend to do better economically and sustainably, to businesses whose very mission statements aim to lift people out of poverty, operate off the grid, save the whales, whatever. The point is that some of them are thinking about saving the planet and the human race in ways that government alone has never had the creative chops to accomplish.
Let's look at what we have now and consider the possibility of a quiet, peaceful transition to something better: Social Business.
The aforehyperlinked Wiki argues that the Social Business model would require its own “Social Wall Street Journal and Social Financial Times”. I don't think we need to think so narrowly (some people sincerely cringe at the very WORD, “social”, let alone some perceived encroachment into their precious Wall Street). We'll be a little sneakier than that: play within the capitalist system, blow corrupt CEOs out of the water with ethical businesses that nab all the creative talent in the world and leave exploitative ones in the dust. Workers will naturally gravitate toward companies that respect them. I dream of a future where the new Capitalists compete for who can save the world first. Maybe mega-social-corporations would arise, swallowing smaller ones, and on-and-on until we're ALL number one.