One of our readings for this week is an article written by Charles Handy, from Harvard Business Review, December 2002. I thought it was so good! It's titled "What's a Business For?", and I thought it was such an interesting review of American Business Culture. Our country is on the brink of yet ANOTHER financial crisis, and it is in large part due to the fact that in America at least, our businesses can't see past the tip of their noses. We're consumed with short term goals, to the point that we end up causing long term harm to ourselves, our businesses, and the economy as a whole.
The whole mess we're in right now, economically, is because businesses didn't exercise a lot of foresight and save for a rainy day. Instead they bought back stock, they cut their employees wages, they campaigned for tax reductions all because they were too "special" to ever fail. While a global pandemic isn't something that could have been easily predicted, there are all sorts of reasons for why a business should have their companies prepared for a disaster. Part of the reason that they don't is because they know that if anything disastrous did happen, that they would be able to collect on their insurance, or have the government bail them out using tax payer money, or, or, or.... So they would never need to be responsible for their own business decisions. I think Charles Handy hit on a lot of important key points, things that are still relevant today nearly 20 years later. I'm all for Capitalism as a method of productivity, but it need to be healthy capitalism, and a capitalism that works for the good of society as a whole, not just the interests of a special few.
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