The Subversive Doctrine of Social Responsibility

'Old school' free marketeers are just that – old school!

The world has changed and so too have the markets.

Disappointingly, Milton Friedman saw social responsibility as a "subversive doctrine” in a free society!

http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/apr2012/social-enterprise-subversive-0

Perhaps we should not be too harsh … even Einstein got it wrong when he stated that there can be no ‘spooky action at a distance’. Quantum Theory says differently ...

As the article above by Carl Frankel explains:

“Social entrepreneurs as a class are devout believers in the power of free enterprise. If they weren’t, they’d be looking to government or philanthropists to drive change instead of building entrepreneurial businesses.”

Initially it was with relief that we discovered the correlation between a greener service delivery in South African municipalities and the sustainability of the municipalities.

Relief because as we are passionately Green we had found a major business case for going Green!

We formulated this as the GreenIt! Law:

“For every ten thousand indigent households [in South Africa] a municipality will probably have a monthly arrears slippage of at least one million rand”.

That is ten to fifteen million rand a year that can be expected to be written off i.e. uncollectable!

But it should not have been relief that we felt – after all sustainability is sustainability, it is indeed Green by default.

It is akin to the 'little h' in calculus, that Newton & Leibniz allow to be made as little as you wish - throw a timeline into the sustainability equation equivalent to the 'little h' in calculus, and let the timeline grow as large as you like.

(See the infinitesimals in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus)

Sooner or later, the factors that mitigate against sustainability will have done their dark work, be it in over consumption of resources, or unsustainable interest rates on credit, or suppression of the natural desire within all of us to be free to live our own individual lives as we choose to.

Ultimately, there is no escaping the reality of what is required for sustainability.

Even if social entrepreneurs are only acting out of the goodness of their hearts, the Bottom Line by default will inevitably benefit.

That means  " ... doing good is also good for business!"

The world wide Zeitgeist is lifting, more and more of the world’s population (aka The Consumer) are aspiring to values and ethics that are aligning with a Greener World.

The Old School businesses that do not see this will eventually find out that, like Milton Friedman, they are old school.

The world is changing ... in many respects (if not all) for the better.