David Roedl

The March issue of Fast Company is dedicated to businesses who are making money by solving crucial social and environmental problems. When I came across it I was simultaneously excited and critical. Excited because it suggests that social entrepreneurship is truly on the rise in a big way. I was critical however, of all the editorial language portraying business as the hero swooping in to save the day from threats that the slow-moving bureaucracy of government is unable to manage. Rhetoric that tries to attribute this phenomenon to the “genius of markets” is to me just laughable. After all, ecological crisis has been mostly brought on by the activities of capitalist industry in the first place, and the primary reason government is so slow-moving to intervene is that environmental legislation is consistently deterred by corporate interest. The failure of the Kyoto protocol illustrates well how capitalist motivations have tended to go directly against environmental responsibility. (See John Bellamy Foster’s Ecology Against Capitalism for an account.)

In my opinion it is not markets that we have to thank for business’ newly emerging sense of responsibility. I think that for whatever reason (perhaps that ecological disaster is near enough now to be seen by the economy’s short-sighted vision), social and ecological awareness is starting to reach a critical mass in society, and we are seeing it manifest in both consumer and entrepreneurial behavior. This awareness is what is doing good, not greed in and of itself. The key insight being shown is that social responsibility does not necessarily mean pure altruism and is not mutually exclusive with profit-making. Also, as crucial as responsible business is, I think its important to remember that government policy stills plays a key role in the puzzle (which is a fact that Andrew Zolli’s feature mentions, just not emphatically enough).