Jim Bennett has a new article in the current issue of The National Interest entitled “Networking Nation States”. This is a very solid piece of work, which will give us all something to mull while we wait for the book. Bennett is going to have his Anglosphere Institute up and running soon, and I will provide details about that as I get them.
Month: January 2004
Just The Usual Slander
Chicago boy Scott Burgess alerts us to some remarkably dishonest anti-American commentary in a Brit tabloid. The columnist asserts falsely that the U.S. forbids Red Cross visits to Guantanamo prisoners. (Lest we miss the point, the headline reads: “Even the Nazis let the Red Cross visit POWs. Why won’t Mr Bush?”)
Scott’s blog is reliably a good read.
“Corporate Social Responsibility”
Rob the BusinessPundit has a post on corporate philanthropy that echoes my own sentiments:
I tend to err on the side of business and say that a business is only responsible for major, direct, negative effects of its policies (like pollution). My problem with making companies too concerned with social activities is that the causes they champion aren’t necessarily the causes I, as a shareholder, would prefer they champion. Why should they get to make the decisions about which charities get funding? Shouldn’t they give that money to shareholders and let them decide what to do with it? Ultimately, I wish these people that hate corporate profits so much would form their own non-profit companies. Let them figure out how to produce pharmaceuticals and computers and cars and everything else without using profitability as a guide. If they succeed, then great we will all be better off. But my guess is that they will fail. When companies follow profit, they follow what consumers want. Profit comes from satisfying consumer needs. That is social responsibility. There is a demand for solutions to societal problems. Over time that demand is being met. That is why a poor person today eats better than a king did several generations ago.
It’s worth reading in full.
UPDATE: Lex and I have a long exchange of views in the comments.
Want some fries with that?
Good link via Drudge about a director who documented what happens when he ate nothing but McDonalds for 30 days.
