Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The True Social Responsibility Of Business

"There is one, and only one, social responsibility of business - to engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006)

Much is said of the "social responsibilities" that businesses should be cognizant of and pertain to.

But the ultimate goal of business is to make enough profit to stay alive!  And to return its excess profits to its ownership - stock and bond holders and/or the business owners.

The business is not in business to employ a certain number of this or that group.
The business is not in business to hire arbitrary percentages from this or that ethnicity or gender or age.
The business is not in business to pay whatever the "living wage" that local bureaucrats consider to be "fair."
The business is not in business to provide benefits packages that are imposed on it by whatever the group.

Instead, the business is in business to conduct business!

The ultimate aim of the butcher, the baker and the beer maker is to provide such a good dinner for its patrons that those patrons return again and again.  And this fabled trio of business providers represents Mr. Adam Smith's example of any business that provides goods or services to its community.  Sometimes that community is worldwide.

No matter the business:

The business of their business is to offer the best product they can.
The business of their business is to attract and encourage a loyal clientele.
The business of their business is to engage that clientele with product and service such that they come back.  And tell others!
The business of their business is self interest!

Should they be "socially responsible?"  If they want to!  It should be up to them.  They would and should decide what "social responsibilities" they will take on.  And in that chosen social responsibility they might be able to do great things!

Those great things might help them to offer a better product.
Those great things might help them to attract and encourage more loyal clientele.
Those great things might help them to provide a better product or service so more clientele comes back.  And tells others!
Those great things might help them as they act in their own self interest.
Those great things might help them to increase their profits!

BUT NOT IF THEY ARE FORCED!

They should be, to quote another Milton Friedman term, "free to choose."

Force, by local law or political will is arbitrary.  It represents coercion.  It is not motivated by economics.

Free enterprise is not arbitrary, or coercive, but it IS motivated by economics.
Free enterprise will keep the business in the narrow path of good behavior and social responsibility.
Free enterprise, the business's market and the market in general, will insure the business does operate outside the rules.
Free enterprise, not in an arbitrary or coercive way, will insure that the business "engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

FREE ENTERPRISE IS, AT THE SAME TIME, CONFINING AND ENCOURAGING!

And, unlike the arbitrary natures of gubment officials or local this or that, free enterprise is even keel.  The true social responsibility of business is to stay alive and prosper within the rules of the game!

And when freely allowed to do this, any other social responsibilities will follow.  By choice.


Friday, November 15, 2013

Do You Recognize What's Happening To Freedom?

 "The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional dogooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means."

Henry Grady Weaver (1889 - 1949)
from The Mainstream of Human Progress

Reprinted in 1953, The Mainstream of Human Progress had a single thesis really - the thesis that human progress happened because of FREEDOM!

And what created freedom itself?  Capitalism.  Pure and simple, capitalism.  

What other economic system demands individual performance, sets up individual progress, and can't exist without morality?  None.

Read here and here and here.

Documents creating freedom through rights endowed by God and protected by a Constitution set the United States up as the wellspring of freedom, and set it apart for growth and progress which vaulted it ahead of the rest of the theretofore stale and static world.

It is personal freedom which led to the creativity, innovation, revolution in productivity, and the creation of wealth that had been previously unimagined in the world.  

This was no experiment!  The United States was the springboard and example.  It was, as Reagan said, the shining city on a hill.  Its treasure had been imagined by only a few, and those few had great impact on those Founding Fathers who risked everything, everything, everything to make it happen.

So why do statists want to come along and, through baby steps or huge sweeps of legislative change, want to change that?  Why do they, as Grady suggests, "set themselves up as gods on earth and would ruthlessly force their views on all others...?"

The answer is simple - control!  Without control what runs wild?  

FREEDOM! 

If freedom runs wild what is there less of?  Control!  What are there fewer of?  Gods on the earth who can impose their views!  And why do they want to impose their views?  Because, obviously, their views, and only their views, are superior!  Or so they think.

But do these views work in the real world?  Never.  Never in history!  Never.

Why?  Because tyranny, soft and hard, can only be imposed.  It is not a natural course.  It is not something that everyone inherently understands.  It is not something that people yearn for, dream to experience or want to happen.

Consider the recent changes our "gods on the earth" have "implemented."  Is it, um, "healthy?"  It is chaos.  

But it is NOT chaos unplanned.  It is planned chaos because that is the only way that the uninformed will "want" these "gods" to come along further, to "offer" more "change," to "fix" it! 

Is the utter sarcasm framed by all those " " marks understood?  Remember, tyranny, soft and hard, must be imposed.  But, in a free society, it can't be imposed as a slap in the face.  It must start as a kiss.

Frogs quickly jump from pans of water when that water is heated quickly.  But frogs will stay if the water is heated slowly, until, inexorably, it is too late.  And recognition of the heat is useless.

And that recognition is part of the plan.  Why?  
Because that recognition is what solidifies the control!


Friday, November 8, 2013

The Opposite Of Free Enterprise

"The state is as God walking on the earth.  The state in and by itself is the ethical whole, the actualization of freedom; and it is an absolute end of reason that freedom should be actual.  The state is mind on earth and consciously realizing itself there.  In considering freedom, the starting point must not be individuality, the single self-consciousness, but only the essence of self-consciousness; for whether man knows it or not, this essence is externally realized as a self-subsistent power in which single individuals are only moments.  The march of God in the world, that is what the state is."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

The starting point of freedom must not be individuality?

That sounds like Borg-speak in the "Star Trek" series - where one and all is each contributing to the "collective."

Hegel spoke of difficult concepts as to how the mind and spirit manifest themselves in a series of contradictions and oppositions, the master/slave dialectic (with dialectic meaning speculative logic), and absolute idealism.  It is said he is best known for his propositions regarding thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad thinking, which is now thought to have concealed his atheism.  Using such conceptually hard-to-understand "logic" made him attractive to other "thinkers," and he was later interpreted by British idealism, Marxism and Fascism. 

Of course the statement above would virtually define the statist and statism.  The statist believes that the gubment is the ultimate authority on earth, and the source of law, rights (extended and denied), moral thinking and religious righteousness. 

The statist thinks of the gubment as sovereign, and therefore not subject to such things as a Biblical foundation, religion or ethics, or natural law.  Rights would not be an endowment from God, but from the state, and can, therefore, be doled out however and to whomever the gubment pleases.  The statist gubment expresses what is a right and what is not.

Orwell said it correctly in his book Animal Farm, where it is stated that in the farmyard all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.  Station is awarded by the two legs in charge.  Where "four legs" all start out as good and all "two legs" bad, those who eventually become the new "two legs" are self proclaimed as good.  And the four legs, therefore, all become bad.

It takes the obedient sheep, with their blind support, to cement the new lie as a truth, by continually saying, "Four legs good, two legs better," which changes eventually to "Two legs good, four legs bad."

Statism can only work by force and coercion.  
Statism can only work by attacking opposite thinking, converting it from good to bad.
Statism can only work by controlling individuality and freedom by making it subservient and momentary, and making the state itself, as Hegel says, the "ethical whole, the actualization of freedom."
Statism has to become, therefore, God walking on the earth.  No other God can be allowed to exist.

No matter how often the sheep repeat all this,
it is NOT true. 

The statist is not ethical and does not redefine freedom.

Statism is the opposite of free enterprise.