UNSUSTAINABLE OXYMORONS

Marxist Capitalists?? Fascist Capitalists? It struck me today how oxymoronic things are becoming. A capitalist company that spends lots of time, energy, and money supporting Marxist or Fascist causes doesn't make any sense to me. But I'm seeing it everywhere I look. This is an oxymoron. How did that happen? How does a perfectly sound, profit seeking, company get sucked into green policies that are, by definition, anti-capitalistic? The other thing I am seeing continually lately is that professional trade organizations are pushing their members into Marxist-Fascist philosophy with regard to doing business.

Something weird is going on within the business world. Something really weird. Public Private Partnership (PPP's) are permeating business operations in the U.S. these days. Hybrids. Not quite private business, yet not quite government. Businesses performing the bidding of government. Government partnering with businesses. Public funds going straight to businesses with lots of fanfare and hoopla! As if this is just the greatest thing on earth. When all along, I thought the leftist-progressives hated the military industrial complex, but now they are all about a government industrial complex?? (GM. GE. Gee whiz)

I was thinking today of the rise of Six Sigma, how it exploded into the business world and became all the rage. Product quality, just-in-time inventory management, cost-benefit analysis and savings, rewards systems, all were taking the manufacturing sector by storm. Pretty soon, everyone who was going anywhere on the upward mobility ladder had to have a green belt, or a black belt, or some sort of belt in Six Sigma. History of Six Sigma By the mid 1990's Six Sigma was the IT method of doing business and the IT credential to have.

I bring this up because as I was thinking about the "Sustainable Development" doctrine and it struck me that the same exact trajectory has taken place and just as fast, if not faster. Sustainable Development is the new Six Sigma, i.e. the newest, latest trend of choice for our way of life, including doing business. The difference is that Six Sigma was just about business practices...where Sustainable Development is about business and government collaborating to tell us how to live. What this tells me is two things: One of them is; people are like sheep, being led into herds going in the same direction as fast as the trends will take them. (Just when you hoped you might be surrounded by other adults, you find out they are all junior high kids who look older, but have an adolescent compulsion to jump on the band wagon with everyone else.) The other thing it tells me, in the case of Sustainable Development, is that education does not seem to have anything to do with critical thinking, common sense, or any other real life skills.

So now it is Sustainable Development. This is the latest IT thing. Except in this case it is a political ideology more than an actual business method...at least as we traditionally think of business. Some few recommended methods come with it, but it is actually a philosophy of social construct, leading businessmen and women to deny capitalism for the sake of altruism. Now that is an amazing turn of the trends..from Six Sigma to Sustainable Development. These two business philosophies are not cut of the same cloth. One is about the goal of producing goods with efficiency and successful economics, resulting in profits. The other is about the goal of business providing benefit to the common good, to society on the terms of social justice by participating in government projects in manners proscribed by the government, economic soundness be damned.

At the same time, thousands of non-profits have popped up promoting themselves as the latest purveyor of Sustainable Development. History of Sustainable Development IT has become so huge that one could not begin to tell the billions of dollars being thrown at IT. IT calls itself "green," but goes much further. IT is all encompassing redefinition of the culture of doing business.

IT has penetrated the American Institute for Architects, The U.S. Building Council (Now called the U.S. Green Building Council), The American Planning Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and all sorts of professional organizations. HGTV promotes Green houses. We have Green cars, Green appliances, Green clothing, Green decorating, Green foods, Green construction, Green Grocers, Green jobs, Green energy, on and on. None of these green things have a whit to do with sound business policies. Though, the purveyors pretend the opposite. In fact, green is costing everyone more, creating products no one wants, forcing lifestyles no one wants, and generally is just tilting at windmills. (pun intended)

So why is this an oxymoron? There is nothing in any of this that permits business to operate just for the sake of doing practical market based business. In order to do business according to the green IT people, you must be using "Best Practices." What are "Best Practices?" "Best Practices" means using your business to promote the redistribution of wealth, social justice, less use of any resource to produce and sell products, and you must pass these standards through the same professional organizations who are spreading this nonsense throughout the land. "Best Practices" in the case of building, means pushing the cost of building out of reach of most people. "Best Practices" means forcing people to purchase things they don't want, such as Smart recycling bins with RFID chips. "Best Practices" means hiring people with inadequate skills to make the government happy and get tax deductions. "Best Practices" in most cases means either doing business on government terms or go out of business. Sometimes, in this topsy turvy world, it means doing business on government terms which cause you to go out of business. Woo Hoo....figure that one out.

This is a contagion of some very un-American, anti-constitutional, dogma that is has infiltrated the business world in America. Opportunists have taken the Climate Change, Global Warming, Sustainable Development lies and woven a net around the American people, some of whom must be just deaf, dumb, and blind to these lies. You can't do business any more without proving to some radical environmentalist group that you are "Green" enough to suit them. The radical environmentalist group now has become your professional trade organization. You want credentials or license? Pass the Sustainability test.

You might be thinking "Green" is good business. (as opposed to bad business?) I'm here to tell you that "Green + Sustainability" may get you some government grants and subsidies. IT might get you some public relations points to make your customers believe the same propaganda. IT may get you some tax deductions. IT pretends to be a lot of things. But IT isn't good business. Why? Because these "Green + Sustainability" policies have turned into crony capitalism, which then turns into Fascism and eventually becomes pure Marxism.

Plus, you don't get the tax deductions, grants and subsidies, or contracts from government unless you are IT enough to get gold stars from the professional organizations you are paying dues to in order to have licenses and accreditation. Frankly, this is outright extortion...that is if you want those particular jobs or if you want to be a "socially acceptable" business.

As we've seen today with Barack Obama's Solyndra Solar Panels scandal, our government is throwing money into the trash bin for "Green" jobs. This is a waste of our money, to say the least. But it speaks to the larger issue of corruption in our government using our taxes to force people into the global Marxist scheme of "Sustainable Development." The DOE was the agency that funneled the $500 million into Solyndra. But folks, that is hardly even the tip of the iceberg. Every agency and Obama Czar is throwing buckets of our money into companies and local governments to comply with Marxist policies. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce should take note of what happens when the government gets involved with stupid schemes like solar panels that cannot produce the energy as advertised and are not profitable products. (Instead, our local regional Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a "Green Conference" next weekend.)

Some examples at these links below. The first one is a Green Chamber competing with the normal Chamber of Commerce. A link from this page is for a new corporation designation just for businesses who promote Sustainable Development, called a B corporation. The B stands for "Benefit." Isn't that nice? I guess S corps. and C corps. aren't enough for these guys. It's a parallel universe....all for the new IT. The B Corp. folks are petitioning our North Carolina legislature to create this new corporate status. They have actually found support in our legislature. Watch out for this.

North Carolina Green Chamber of Commerce
B Corporation Site
Business Wisconsin.edu
Lancaster Chamber .com
Maryland Chamber.com