Money Is Naughty, Revenue Is Bad- When You Make A Profit, Moonbats Get Sad

James Rose of Ethical Corporation magazine has put a case that companies and corporations world-wide igonore their reason for existence and responsibility to their shareholders and perform all reconstruction work following disasters without making a profit.

What we need here is for corporations to throw off the cloak of self-interest. The best thing they could do is to approach the situation as it now stands as if it were a legitimate business opportunity, apart from one important factor: they will expect no financial or brand rewards.

Imagine the activity, the solution-thinking, the application of trained and focused minds to rebuild communication and transport networks, clean up waterlogged communities, provide supply lines of food and water, manage people and machines, and to facilitate healthcare.

This is not to say that the many non-profit groups, such as World Vision or the Red Cross, are not doing this. But, they will be waiting on, hoping for, funds and logistical assistance, scrambling for dollops of aid money and gifts-in-kind from all of us, from governments and from corporations.

This line of supply and management could be usefully shortened if corporations went in and did more of the work themselves, gratis, under the direction of the charity groups on the ground, approaching it as if it were a normal business operation.

What we need here is a precedent to break the ridiculous and misanthropic culture of self-interest corporations carry like a shield. So, where might this start? First, we need to tell our corporate bosses this is what we want. As shareholders and non-financial stakeholders, we must let them know we approve of and support such a course.

Fortunately so-called "ethical investors" are generally dingbats without the means to do anything but make some noise at AGMs- I'll bet Jim turns up for work without expecting reward for his miserable, ill-considered efforts. Likewise staff at the utterly useless NGOs with their hands out for a stake of the billions in relief aid floating around following the disastrous tsunamis in south East Asia.

NGOs may not be motivated by profit, but they have a healthy self-preservation instinct and none of their staffers or management seem inclined to go on a work-for-the-dole remuneration scheme and move in with the natives they're "assisting".

When did profit become evil? If the necessary work is to be completed to a satisfactory standard and in a timely manner, there has to be something in it for the providers of the necessary services, same for the people (mainly local) employed to carry the job out, or should they work for subsistence as well, eh Jim?

If you want an example of how to get things done, try the initial response to this tragedy- while the UN, NGOs and assorted other mayhem maggots flapped their soup-coolers and busied themselves with whatever management structures they needed to filter and extract their piece of the flood of aid revenue, the US Navy, USAF, RAAF and RAN were doing, and achieving.

The fewer aid organisations and the more military/commercial involvement, the faster and better the job will be done.

UPDATE Al Bundy has more to say on the biggest, most bloated and most ineffective grand-daddy of NGOs of them all, but is charitable enough to find good in everything; the last thing the UN got right as far as I'm concerned was the eradication of smallpox, and that was achieved through the sort of authority combined with co-operation that would send most members of the whorehouse on the Hudson screaming to the nearest branch of Human Rights Watch.

BTW- here's a buckethead who thinks HRW are Nazis, and the UN is crushing dissent and freedom- to some degree, I concur, but not for the reasons presented in this treatise.

(Cross-posted at the Daily Diatribe).