You may have seen this article last week –

NEW JERSEY CITY OF EVESHAM TO USE UBER TO CURB DRUNK DRIVING

And it’s organized but not funded by the city:

Funded entirely by local nonprofits and businesses, Evesham clearly embodies the “love thy neighbor” ideal, and so far, things are looking up.

Short term, average DUIs were down from 25 to 8 in September.

I’ll keep watching this one. It will be interesting to see if it’s sustainable and what kind of impact it has long term. Love to see local people getting creative with solutions.

Mark Pennington’s book cover

I’m reading Mark Pennington’s book Robust Political Economy, and he sums up in his conclusion 3 main objections to Classical Liberalism, (which is essentially a belief in the ‘free markets’ and a minimal state). This is something that any libertarian leaning person should understand!

Here is my paraphrased, layman’s term interpretation of what he’s written (p. 264)

The three main reason people dismiss Classical Liberalism are

1. the crazy idea that people make rational decisions in the free market and get to optimal outcomes that way (invisible hand, or the idea that individual actions and choices in a voluntary market benefit everyone.

2. Classical Liberals are so individualistic they dismiss “the communal identifications that shape human lives,” or individuals’ need for connection with other human beings and being part of a wider community or group.

3. Classical Liberalism doesn’t care about or solve problems of social justice and the unequal distribution of power and social status.

Mark Pennington’s book is essentially a collection of arguments seeking to show that none of these stand up to scrutiny.

Looking at the free market and compassion, I’ll keep all 3 in mind. When it come to efforts to help people out of poverty, I see these common arguments:

1. Voluntary solutions aren’t enough – people wouldn’t give enough; they’d be selfish. There wouldn’t be enough help. There would be an undersupply of help. 

2. Private welfare organizations and safety nets are gone – if we were to ‘privatize’ the welfare state, the mutual aid societies, the churches, the grassroots organizations and extended families, they just wouldn’t be there to fill the gap.  There’s an undersupply of alternatives; It’s too late to change it.

3. Everyone should help their neighbor, and making it mandatory through government action is the moral thing to do…

I’ll start with that!

Random thoughts – forgive me if my logic/reasoning is flawed. Just going to put this out there to the 3 people who read my blog! (Thanks, Steve, Mom, Karla).

So I have a company that provides a particular software, that does certain things other software doesn’t. We tell people about it, we show it to them, we find out what their problems are and talk about how our software might help. We let them USE it. We tell them how much we will sell it for. If they want it, then we discuss a bit more, sign a contract. We send them the software to use. They send us some money.

We are a “for profit” company, meaning that we sell the software for more than it costs us to produce/market, etc. the software. Are we evil? Are we less noble than government or non-profits?

Who are we exploiting?

Employees?  I cannot coerce someone to work for me. They can give notice at any time. They voluntarily contract with us to be an employee and do certain work, in exchange for certain benefits/payments/value.

Customers?  We tell them what we’ll sell it for, and they choose to buy or not. We have a contractual agreement on what we provide, what each party’s responsibilities are. I don’t see any exploitation there.

I can tell can tell you that I’m VERY keen to make a profit. Making a profit means: we may be able to buy a house in Santa Barbara some day, we may be able to finance our kids’ university education, and we may be able to pay for my husband’s heart valve replacement surgery in 8-9 years (yes, we have insurance, but I’m expecting  by then the deductible would still bankrupt us:). From our share in the business.

What if the business is a roaring success, and my net worth ends up in the millions?  Is this evil? Unethical? Would I somehow be destroying the community/the world? Exploiting someone?  Is there a line somewhere to what’s an OK amount of profit and what’s too much?  If you knew that the company was going to give  10% of all profits to the Salvation Army, would that make it all better?  If you were a shareholder, would you be angry that the company was giving away profits to a charity rather than to you? Maybe you hated the Salvation Army and loved the ALS Association?

Are we less noble than a Non-Profit or Government entity?

We provide a software that helps large organizations communicate better than they could before. Our software helps call center reps get last minute info about power lines being down faster than before, which improves how knowledgeable they are during their service calls.  Our software has helped reps on the road find out about price drops before they go into call on customers. Our software has helped executive teams find out how well employees are taking the restructure, or if they really understand the new processes. This is good stuff, and I’m proud to work for a technology company that provide tools that enable these kinds of things. Profits reward the people who started the company, dumped in a pile of money to see if anyone else out there thought the software was as good and as useful as they did. These are the people who also risk LOSING the pile of money they gave to the company in exchange for shares/part ownership.  This is innovation. This is what creates economic growth – people figuring out how to do things BETTER, FASTER, for less money/time than they used to do it.  This is how we ‘grow the pie’.

Non-Profits:

Their survival depends on whether they get enough donors to support their cause/project/goal. They are part of the private sector as much as for-profits. I love them! They are valuable and necessary to our community, to positive change in society, to humanity.  Do they grow the pie? I think YES – they provide products and services voluntarily that people and entities want. If people/entities decide they don’t want them, they can stop donating. People who take the risk in setting up a non profit, dumping in a pile of money do not expect to get it back. They transfer it to the non-profit essentially – non-profits cannot be owned like for-profits and thus can’t be ‘sold’ or exchanged, right? The reward and benefits from creating a non-profit are somewhat non-tangible. What do you think – frankly I’ve never ran a non-profit or researched the sector.  Of course, non-profits that survive on government grants are sort of in the next category, my least favorite.

Government:

Did you ever say- “hey, I’m not happy with the state of our schools, and I know that $XXX of my tax dollars is given to schools. I’m going to switch carriers – cancel my service with the local School District and send it instead to the Montessori.”

NOPE, you can’t opt out or go to the competition when it comes to government. If politicians vote to take more from you in tax to pay for a skateboard park behind your home and the public agrees – you HAVE to pay or you’ll be fined/jailed/wages garnished. There is no voluntary contract here.

I’m not a fan of government taking over non-profit functions or for-profit functions, in case you couldn’t tell.  Government exists to provide rules, guidelines, consequences so that everyone plays the game fairly. Government is there to stop bad guys who steal, kill, harm,  lie, cheat, right?  I don’t think gov’t’s job is to pick winners or losers or stack the deck for certain groups and ignore others. Right now, government acts for whomever lobbies the loudest, right? It’s all about special interest groups competing for dollars/rewards taken from someone else and given to them.

Last thought for the day. I’m not a fan of large corporates who provide a service or product not on its own merits in a fair trade and open market but instead get in bed with government to

• pass favorable rules to keep out other companies
• receive subsidies, propping up products and services that DON’T actually provide enough value to stand on their own,
• get special tax breaks for their company or their region or their industry (that others do not get)
• buy off politicians with special pricing, perks, charity donations, community project

This is corporatism, where the elites in gov’t and the elites in private organizations stack the deck. Worst sort of game.

I’m on the tip of an iceberg here, clearly. This keeps getting longer and longer. Next time I’ll get into the value of government – some of the great things it provides.

Great article by @gbraud on PR lessons from the BP Oil Spill. http://tinyurl.com/BPBraud

Heard a crazy story from a old schoolmate (I’ll call him Z) I caught up with a few weeks ago.
He works in a manufacturing job and is part of a union.
He changed careers a couple of years ago, and still getting the hang of it. Here’s how he got branded as a troublemaker when he believed the Corporate Safety Training. He told me NOT to mention company or industry, as it could only get him into more trouble. Lost all faith in fairness or ‘doing the right thing’ on the job.

See if this could happen in your company!

New job – full day training on safety where everyone was told:

1. It’s OK, if you have a safety concern, you can report it without fear of reprisal.

2. We care about you, about safety – it’s the most important thing.

3. If in doubt, go the safety route.

4. Then they went through safety procedures.

The Incident:

Z is working, boss comes over, says Z, help me move this steel pipe (rigged up). Z says, that’s over 100lbs, are you rigging certified, because I’m not, and yesterday they told us that’s a safety violation.   Boss says no, he’s not certified, but to do it anyway. Z says no, this is exactly what they told us not to do yesterday, and wonders if his boss was there. Boss gets angry, tells Z where to go, finds someone else to help him move the pipe.

REVENGE:

Soon after, Z is working and over his head comes rigging with a massive steel pipe – it’s his boss, moving this pipe even though he can certainly see Z working underneath. Z stops work and gets out of the path. Boss tells him to keep working! Z refuses (not going to be crushed by a steel pipe for anyone). Boss says, you think you’re better than me? You after my job? You the big man? and more trash talk.  Z reports his boss. 

The Sad End

When he talks to the supervisor later, finds out his boss responded by badmouthing Z of course. Boss also reported Z for SLEEPING on the JOB, which is outrageous and not true. Supervisor agrees with Z, but doesn’t do anything about it.

Boss and Z have more words, Boss makes it clear he will will win and will make Z’s life hell if Z continues. Boss is Latino – all Latino workmates stop talking to XXX (who isn’t).  Things are tense, Z thankfully moves to a different crew soon after that.

Results/Learnings:

Z = branded as a troublemaker within union/by line managers.
Z = no longer believes corporate BS about safety.
Z = learns you’re not SUPPOSED to think or take initiative and will be punished if you do.
Z = stops his errant behavior, toes party line, takes up no more causes.

Boss = not individually incented to care about safety.
Boss = gets in trouble if safety problems; doesn’t want them brought up or reported.
Boss = protects himself and his job from newbies.

Safety Initiative = good luck getting that reduction in safety-related incidents

I still want to write about compassion and the free-market – if we get rid of government entitlement programs which is the moral thing to do, who steps in to fill the gap? The Gov’t programs have atrophied the non-profits who used to fill this role. So today, how do we help one another, recreate true community and avoid the brutality that is expected to come when the gov’t safety nets go? Seems to me that churches and synagogues used to be the natural answer, community groups that could care for those down on their luck. Am I right in thinking that fewer and fewer go to church, and we’re pretty isolated from one another – at least in our family, that’s the way it is. There’s some connection through the PTA, after school activities (superficial) and we used to have community through our co-op preschool (was wonderful).

Baystate Health chooses @SnapComms new media tools for employee communications in their hospitals http://ht.ly/2gKsk News Release