I received a very thought provoking comment recently on my post, ‘Will we set our own boundaries?’ The comment questioned whether financial profit is what drives businesses to operate irresponsibly and if so, whether we should set boundaries on profit. Could we create a more sustainable economy if every business operated as a non-profit organisation? Could it be that only a non-profit could ever be considered a truly sustainable business? Now here’s an interesting thought experiment!
Profit is not always the enemy. I remember reading about the founders of Ben & Jerry's explaining how the more profit they make, the more good they can accomplish. Greed is definitely the issue in my opinion. Profit is the incentive to build and grow your business and hopefully do good in whichever way you define it (which is a whole other conversation!).
Jan 25, 2023·edited Jan 26, 2023Liked by Tom Greenwood
Great article - very thought provoking! I have read that maybe our innate human psychology that values 'status' is what is actually behind our motivation for consumption. This is, as I understand, widely seen in other apes and could explain some of our human tendencies for greed and "getting ahead of others". That said, I believe there have been and, in some more remote parts of the world, continue to be communities of indigenous communities that demonstrate many generations of living sustainably with their ecosystem - see https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000245623. So it is at least re-assuring to know that we are capable of doing this! I guess the question is whether there's a way to apply the sustainability principles adopted by these communities to those of the wider world without major drops in living standards? To go further, is it actually possible to create truly sustainable societies with standards of living that are comparable with much of the western world right now? Given our underlying dependency on fossil fuels to enable and underpin the wealthly economies, I remain sceptical.
To get a sense of how early European settlers saw the 'New World' and the natural riches they could exploit, a process that has been going on for centuries and continues to this day, I recommend Annie Proulx's new book Barkskins - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/19/barkskins-annie-proulx-review. It's a bit of a monster read but provides a sound historical context to this whole debate.
Profit is not always the enemy. I remember reading about the founders of Ben & Jerry's explaining how the more profit they make, the more good they can accomplish. Greed is definitely the issue in my opinion. Profit is the incentive to build and grow your business and hopefully do good in whichever way you define it (which is a whole other conversation!).
Great article - very thought provoking! I have read that maybe our innate human psychology that values 'status' is what is actually behind our motivation for consumption. This is, as I understand, widely seen in other apes and could explain some of our human tendencies for greed and "getting ahead of others". That said, I believe there have been and, in some more remote parts of the world, continue to be communities of indigenous communities that demonstrate many generations of living sustainably with their ecosystem - see https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000245623. So it is at least re-assuring to know that we are capable of doing this! I guess the question is whether there's a way to apply the sustainability principles adopted by these communities to those of the wider world without major drops in living standards? To go further, is it actually possible to create truly sustainable societies with standards of living that are comparable with much of the western world right now? Given our underlying dependency on fossil fuels to enable and underpin the wealthly economies, I remain sceptical.
I have read 2 other really interesting papers on this recently - Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible? (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042810011547?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=78a093ccbab223e3) and The role of psychology in building a more sustainable society (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/psychologylse/2021/05/17/the-role-of-psychology-in-building-a-more-sustainable-society/). Obviously these are just 2 articles in a sea of research that has been going on for decades.
To get a sense of how early European settlers saw the 'New World' and the natural riches they could exploit, a process that has been going on for centuries and continues to this day, I recommend Annie Proulx's new book Barkskins - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/19/barkskins-annie-proulx-review. It's a bit of a monster read but provides a sound historical context to this whole debate.