Sunday, October 07, 2007

The Misanthropic Principles: Principle Number 1

So after this rant I have been reading up about Corporate Social Responsibility. Well, the punkscience conclusion is that its all a bag of wank. Corporate benefit legislation dictates that corporate directors are obliged by law to act solely in the interests of profit. In most countries this makes acting for the public good illegal, unless there is some profit to be made in doing so (which is- and let's be honest- rarely the case). And any company seen to be doing so is actually pursuing some ulterior profit-making purpose, quod erat demonstrandum.

So; if, by some perverse fluke of chance, any Brown/Blair government lackey actually ends up reading this post: STOP FUNDING LOBBY GROUPS WITH OUR TAX MONEY IN THE NAIVE BELIEF THAT THE CORPORATIONS WILL SOMEHOW RETURN THE FAVOUR, YOU STUPID, STUPID BASTARDS.

The way things seem to have panned out for the Blair/Brown administration is that the people want more from their taxes without any increase in taxes and the only way to be seen to be "achieving"- and thereby governing successfully- is to take the corporate shilling and become whores to the corporations. This involves putting industry concerns over and above those of the public, thereby giving the corporations reason to 'donate' to public enterprises in return. Thus, a legislative environment that gives more weight to business concerns than to the electorate's is created. The nature of this plutocratic relationship is to subvert democracy, human rights and the richness of society. Inadequate yardsticks such as GDP are used to demonstrate the 'success' of such policies whilst more appropriate ones, such as the GPI, start to slide.

This substitution of corporate priorities over and above those of the public is the first of the Misanthropic Principles.


Additional:


Interestingly I have just encountered Goodhart's law. Quite appropriate to any discussion of surrogate measures of socio-economic progress, I thought. I found it through this article, which is also totally excellent. Dude.

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