You throw some volunteers at a relief effort and suddenly you have purchased the indulgences to act exactly as you please, with no need for morals any longer.

Your euphemism for “Short-termism” deserves a much stronger name, mainly, “Plundering, Raping, and Pillaging for the Profit God.” Though i suppose that doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily.

Why aren’t we agitating for a stronger white collar labor movement that would do away with at-will employment and give everyone a golden parachute?

Why aren’t we instilling the golden rule into our accountants, financial people, and MBAs?

It’s not the short term thinking we need to eliminate, it’s the narcissistic lack of any concern for anyone other than the company and its image.

Why aren’t you angry?

Mazarine
Former editorial assistant for the Economist Intelligence Unit

Lets put aside for a moment the obvious lack of proven causality in the argument.

A glimpse at the recent economic meltdown, the crass overtness of corporatism and the clear imbalance of power between corporate and legislative entities, makes the simplistic and very dated argument of legislating unbridled greed laughable as a sustainable doctrine. While simple, this is also a very reactionary ex-post model that has had a great cost to society in both the short and long terms. The basic premise of making money in a race to externalize more costs to society and the environment while legislation is racing to react and keep up in keeping corporate greed in check is cumbersome, inefficient and very costly! This model also causes a unnecessarily tense, adversarial and unstable balance.

How about another old fashioned truism: “a stitch in time saves nine”, i.e. why not consider a much less socially costly ex-ante approach where the corporation, as an entity evolved in maturity and sophistication from its immature self-centered beginnings, indeed becomes a model citizen with strategies, metrics and goals to actually benefit the triple bottom line, rather than just its own bottom line. Would this not be a more socially and financially efficient model?