Is there a way in which everyone can benefit from capitalism? What might that look like?
Would investing to make everyone else poorer than you be equivalent to increasing your personal wealth?
Examples of companies that supported their employees and environment. That used their business for positive social and ecological change.
- Ben & Jerry’s
- Stonyfield farms
- Patagonia
- Interface Carpets
Business is a neutral tool so why not use it for progressive social change.
Instead of taking venture capital to help grow the business they sold shares to the local community (Vermont only). Allow the community to be business owners — as the business prosper the community would prosper. They underwrote their own company and did their own roadshows around the state. They had a low IPO purchase price ($126/share) to enable a low barrier of entry to people from various socioeconomic classes. 1 out of 100 families in Vermont were owners.
Business is a machine for making money and to be as much of service to the community as possible, they decided they needed to give away as much of the profits as possible. Thus, they established a foundation that would receive 7.5% of pre-tax profits from the company compare to the corporate average is 1.5%.
Business controls our society by controlling our media through ownership, controlling our legislation through lobbying, controlling our elections through campaign contributions, and controlling our everyday lives as individuals as customers and employees. And through all of that is done in the narrow self-interest of business without a concern for the effect that it has on the society as a whole.
The reality is that we will never accomplish our spiritual desires or our social desires until we integrate those two components into business where we spend the majority of time, where our labor is organized, and where we make money.
Most businesses measure success is by profit or how much money is left over at the end of the year. At Ben and Jerry’s we redefined success to be both how much have we helped to improve the quality of life in the community and how much profit is left over.
The most powerful opportunity is not giving money away, but rathe integrating social concerns into day-to-day business activities.
The power of the business is how they can affect change in the day-to-day business decisions. Things like how to treat employees, the environment, etc. For example, there is Greyston bakery in NYC that gives jobs to those who need it. Ben & Jerry’s supports that by purchasing and using their brownies in all their ice-cream which in around 2010 or so was $8 million dollars. Using 100% fair trade ingredients. They have franchise ice-cream shops where some of which are partner-shops which are owned and operated by non-profits working with at-risk youth. Any money they make goes back into the non-profit and the store provides jobs for the youth.
One of the most powerful tools a business has is its voice. Thus, during the height of the cold war the wrapping of a ice-cream popsicle described the US defense budget and advocated using 1% of it for peace programs.
Using the business model of linked prosperity to show the various communities for which the ingredients are sourced, where product is manufactured, and where it is sold are all part of the prosperity of the growing business.
Reflections of a Green Business Pioneer with Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia
Corporations aren’t going to change on their own — it has to be forced by the consumer. We are no longer citizens, but consumers.
Everybody who’s in business understands that business does do environmental harm. The problem is when businesses don’t take responsibility for that harm that they do, and when they’re not curious about how to curb that harm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/rose-marcario-patagonia-corner-office.html
Stonyfield Farms
The myth of sustainability that that is a choice between the environment and not make money.
It’s actually incredibly good for business. Drives down costs, makes the company money, increases sales, and makes a better product through innovation, employees are galvanized around a higher purpose, etc..
Ray Anderson CEO of Interface Carpets — one of the world’s largest commercial manufacture of carpets
Employee-owned companies
Sustainable Capitalism and Environmental Personhood
B-Corporations
B-Corporation is a certification of “social and environmental performance” is a private certification of for-profit companies, distinct from the legal designation as a Benefit corporation.
Ensuring large corporations are paying their share of taxes to help society!
Karl Marx famously explained this displacement in terms of “commodity fetishism.” Building on the Marxist theory we should first think about how we displace human relationships through our relationship with the stuff we buy.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-compassionate-consumption
