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Poverty policy is key to capitalist success
Most business policies focus on welfare and growth communities because that is where the money goes around. Hardly any of the business plans involve the markets of the poor. The companies that do actually included those markets structurally in their policies tend to score better on the Multidimensional Index of the 5K Group. Why is that?
There is nothing noble about combating poverty. It is good business practice. During the credit crisis we have seen the down fall of big, so called “solid”, institutions s.a. banks due to a moral crisis rather than financial. Typically this moral crisis was caused over the backs of the financially unstable and unwealthy. Does this indicate a contradiction in my argument? Not at all.
The risktaking of the banks by entering bad credit zones was caused by greed and self interests of high level executives who covered their backs by insuring bad credits with others misplacing the trust relationship in the chain. As the entire chain was based on the same material principles of greed the business was a pure speculation that unnoticed inflated the ballon of risk until it exploded into the face of the world. One can hardly argument that all this was a policy to help the poor.
When we design a policy to develop markets with poor people we do that from the moral multidimensional principle of the ideal market development through healthy and motivated people. To achieve this poverty needs to be eradicated from the entire world. We do not talk only about poverty in complex, unstable, tribe oriented third world countries. We talk also about the growing poverty in the rich welfare countries. When a company decided to address this market too, not just by making products available to it but by truely developing a strategy to address the issue effectively, it shows moral integrity. Nobody will ask the company to finance such development our of their own pocket because such strategies of sensitivity to the reality of the world finds many partners in government, institutions and foundation to join forces for a common goal.
The willingness to address such markets by connecting with other organizations and creating serious policy shows and develops an authentic and responsible company culture that is filled with sense and that subsequently will radiate also into the wealthier markets where competition is strong and one does not distinguish anymore through price or quality but with company integrity and authenticity. And this is the basis of any sustainable success and therefore the reason for a company to score high in our Index.
5 years of crisis, 15 to change the world
A lot of people in politics and business think that this credit crisis is one we sing out in a few month. The capital injections of western governments should stabelize the situation again. The contrary is true. The credit crisis has indeed triggered the problem but did not cause it. The problems lie deeper and are related to morality. This is an issue that has no capitalist response but needs to come from inside.
To illustrate what I mean I kindly ask you to reflect about the last 60 years of western history. There are two clear blocks: The reconstruction phase after world war two and the adult economic phase after that (the last 20 years). Now think what has been created of wealth in the first block of 30 to 40 years? Our infrastructures, social security systems, life insurance, pension scemes, housing infrastructures, etc. all originated in that period of time. It was a true era of growth and material creativity as well as content.
But what has changed over the last 20 years? Really changed? Absolutely nothing. All that has happened is that the existing values have been copied over and over again to get us to have more and more of the same but cheaper every time. The economies however were forced to grow through pushing our overconsumptive nature. We have hardly invested in renovation of our true values: our infrastructures, our ways of living, nothing. That all stayed the same. So economies were blown up as a ballon through speculation and development of greed, nothing else. Meanwhile the true wealth on which our economies have to rely became obsolete and overrated.
Meanwhile we grew cold to the challenges of the world. We have lost the habbit to evaluate our choices against the morality of what is good and what is bad. Our moral is empty while our mind just sees price tags and material needs. We even compare eachother according external decorations rather than the sensitivity of true inner values. We take a distance from family and friendship values, grow distant from our children or elderly and develop a respectless attitude towards our neighboors and environment just persueing material wealth in which we believe to find security.
Twenty years of demoralisation is a long time. An entire generation of people doesn’t know what true moral is and often grow mentally sick by the overwhelming need of spiritual meaning. The credit crisis has just popped the ballon into our faces showing us the enormous gap between our obsolete structures and the point of balance that would be needed. This crisis will take a long time to resolve because we need to rebuild our true and intimate believes. This crisis is personal, social and within business policy. It affects us all and takes at least 5 years and a lot of suffering to set the basis for renewal.
And renewal is needed, totally. It is as if we come out of world war three and needed to reconstruct everything. The bulldozers literally need to go through our society and we need to rebuild it according the multidimensionality that we now know. Our goal is the optimal point of balance that will permanently become our goal for the next 15 years. We will measure ourselves against this goal, run our business created added values for that balance and vote for social representatives that create a healthy basis for the collective persecution of these goals.
In 15 years we will live in a new world. But first we need to avoid getting ourselves into chaos or terror due to the nature that we need to abondon in time. We can do it, but it needs to come from within, all together.
Why should we transform?
We hear all the time that we are doing all right so why would we want to transform our business practices at all into multidimensionality? Well, the first thing we should ask ourselves is: “Are we indeed doing so well?” If you really look at it we are not at all. We are socially, morally and economically parasiting on the wealth that was generated between 1950 and 1985 approximately. After that we started to decline in mentality, taking wellfare for granted and allowing ourselves to become greedy. This is no basis for prosperity at all.
When we look at the ideal world as we would define it with all the knowledge we have today then we would take all we have today with two extras: that the whole world was wealthy, healthy and vital. Because such human world would be the optimum market to develop any business. And secondly that we would have no danger at all of running our of resources. Because with an abundance of (natural) resources we could we would be able to do as we please and not worry about destruction or endangering our species at any time.
This ideal world is called “Utopia” right now because we have all we have but behave in such a way that the extras that we would desire are getting further and further our of our reach. This risk we run is that we even loose what we have today, or yesterday I should say, as the credit crisisn already to an important chunck of our wealth away. That is why we need to transform. It is not that difficult to turn the trend. It is a matter of mentality. When we make our business plans why not commit ourselves to produce some product or services that improves the health, wealth or motivation of our fellow human beings. Simply by making ourselves think about it is already a mayor transformation. If everyone does it the world would evolve to be a better place day after day.
As with the resources we could dedicate our innovative creativity to challenge everything the over consumes resources and create similar added values without any dependence on natural resources or at least minimizing it while using resources that are available in abundance. Why should everything remain the same when we have changed everything already various times around during the last century? Let’s keep changing everthing: our housing, infrastructures, transpotation systems, safety ad protection, energy usage, spare time, education, …………
In change there is added value and in added value is profit and profit is wealth and prosperity and prosperity is good. As long as it is worth all our while and not just a few. That is why we need to transform and learn to compete in doing good, better and best.
