Unethical businessmen aided by politicians have transgressed boundaries of ethical, equitable, sustainable living in the pursuit of short-term profits and immediate self-gain to support certain exclusive lifestyles. The excuse used is 'competition' or 'everyone else is doing it'. This greed has now seeped into lay individuals, families, children, societies, nations and are creating unrest and dissatisfaction at all levels of the human-ecosystem. To feed this greed, newer and newer technologies are created to benefit a few. The immediate outcome of these misguided priorities is bad health-of individuals, economies and the environment. Long-term effects include obesity, divorce, war and the resultant effort to create more technologies to solve problems created by earlier misuse of technology.
How does one break and come out of this vicious circle of material addiction and technology creation to sustain this addiction?
2. Technology makes things easier to do, enables faster production and sadly enough, faster consumption of scarce common natural resources. This is a vicious circle. And all vicious circles, are hard to break. Wars, pogroms, genocides, invasions, colonisation, slavery-are all designed with a selfish goal: Grab other people’s resources. And make profits. From Lehman brothers, Monsanto, Enron, Nestle.....we have seen them all.
Vicious circles are confusing because the process is not linear, there are no clear starting and ending points. One thing leads to the other and the ending dove-tails again into the starting point.
3. The arms industry, entertainment industry, meat industry, porn industry, whaling industry, forestry industry are only some 'visible' examples with known ethical malpractices, with almost every industry bending ethics for the sake of the bottomline, because 'there is competition everywhere' and 'everyone is doing it'!
4. Scrupulous businessmen fulfill a perceived need in society. They put together their ingenuity and manufacturing ability for making life easier for others. They often do not advertise or patent their services.
Unscrupulous businessmen create a 'want'/desire in society, then bombard their target with psychological advertising, making them think they 'need' this, whatever the cost. They patent/license/copyright their product and feed off the spoils.
Since unscrupulous businessmen are at the root of imbalance in society and the environment, should we reign-in the business sector with more regulations, ethical controls and accountability?
5. So where do we start to break the vicious circle? Where does the buck stop? Businesses? National policy? Societies? Families? Individuals? Me?
"Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that's a lot. Because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect."-Rob Reiner.
There are certain sectors and certain businesses which are problematic. Many other sectors and businesses agree that their counterparts should not exist and actively work toward supporting humanity and the planet.
Examples of our agendas for achieving sustainability which must involve the private sector--those who are on board with sustainability:
1. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8959-2_2
2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imic.2015.04.001
3. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-02-2017-0043
And reflections on responsibility in the context of the petroleum industry:
1. https://doi.org/10.17585/arctic.v7.418
2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2016.03.008
3. https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-10-2015-0150
Ilan Kelman : Thank you for your insightful comment and the links you have provided.
Which businesses are problematic and which are benign? How does one differentiate and discern? What are the criteria involved? How does one define 'Good & Bad'?
IMHO, there is no black and white demarcation but shades of grey.
Best.
Dear All,
Let us get this one step at a time.
Earlier I mentioned that unscrupulous businesses are the root cause of erosion of values in society which is leading to environmental degradation and further on, Climate change. Anyone disagree? Can we go any deeper to find out the very root of the problem?
Insights invited.
Best.
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