The Transition Movement discussion

This topic is for the discussion of chapter 12, Transforming the Corporation into a Driver of Sustainability.

I liked some of the sections in this chapter, but one or two sort of put me to sleep.

Items of note:

144 - We (those of us in the developed world) are now living by consuming Earth's capital, not its interest. An interesting way of putting the fact that we can only sustain a civilization that lives off the interest, that by consuming the "capital" (non-renewable stuff) we will eventually become bankrupt.

144 - change the rules so that corporations can compete on the basis of innovation, resource conservation, and satisfaction of multiple stakeholder demands - rather than on the basis of who can best influence government regulation, avoid taxes, and obtain subsidies for harmful activities in order to optimize shareholder returns.

144-45 A new corporate model, "Corporation 2020", 2020 being the date "by which it (the new model) needs to be in place in order for us not to cross (planetary) boundaries." (See http://www.corporation2020.org/ )

147 - to change the paradigm that allows "too big to fail" companies to increase in both size and number, one of the simplest steps would be to "impose limits on the tax deductibility of interest expense for nonfinancial corporations, by phasing out or capping the total amount of interest deductible.

148 - The section on Breaking the Cycle of Advertising and Consumption has many cogent observations, such as the four recommendations on page 150.

150-2 - Taking Externalities into Account. Another good section, recommending a better accounting framework, "one that reflects both positive and negative externalities in a corporation's financial statements"

See also the paragraph on 152 about the recently formed "TEEB for Business Coalition (The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity)" which has as its primary task "To standardize the methodologies for calculating exactly these types of corporate externalities." (see http://www.trucost.com/published-rese...)

152 - "the goals of Corporation 2020 should be the goals of human society: increased human well-being, increaesed social equity, imporoved social and communal harmony, reduced ecological scarities, and reduce environmental risks.

I find it fascinating that in the previous chapter, we learned that interest based lending requires growth and is therefore part of the problem, then here we have someone talking about interest based lending as if it is something that can continue. That is a pretty significant contradiction. "Solutions" that don't change the failure points of the system aren't really solutions.

"Bob Garfield, journalist and advertising commentator, coined the term "listenomics" to describe the trend toward businesses using open-source techniques to find ideas for product development, marketing, production, and many other activities that have traditionally been controlled by isolated corporate departments."

I kind of wanted to throw the book across the room when I got to this. So, he wants to get ideas from other people, but leave the corporate departments in control. That is basically just market research and polling. That doesn't really address the problem because you are leaving the same people in control and those people still have the desire to increase profits. It's not a real, systemic change. If you want input from consumers regarding product development, then actually involve them. This is the whole idea behind cooperative/democratic markets.

This whole chapter is annoying. I am getting really sick of all the suggestions on how corporations can behave more responsibly when in the end, there are no enforcement mechanisms proposed. To me, this looks like more of the same old failed way of thinking in which profit-driven, privately owned corporations will somehow find it in their hearts to do what is right. We supposedly just need to apply social pressure on them to do what's right. BS. We need to require them to do things, not just cross our fingers and hope.

Have we seriously not reached the point yet where people see the need for us to democratically say "no, we are not, as a society, going to make X, Y, and Z because we do not need them"? Why should we keep in place the mechanisms for allowing companies to use increasingly scarce and precious resources to make things that nobody needs? Why continue producing first then seeing if the product sells rather than deciding BEFORE something is made that people don't want it?

This chapter doesn't offer any real changes. It still leaves us with a world in which investors are ultimately deciding what gets produced and what doesn't, what companies are successful and which aren't. It's all well and good to talk about how companies SHOULD prioritize things other than profits, but if there are no mechanisms for REQUIRING such behavior, nothing really changes.

Thanks for the comment, Katy. I wish it had been made way back when I posted the previous message.

It sounds like you are pretty down on large corporations. I can assure you that it's unlikely you are more sick of them than I am.

I didn't think this chapter had a whole lot to say, but there really isn't too much that can be said about forcing corporations to behave responsibly. They are in a position of power that would likely short-circuit any such attempt, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm sorry that you gave up reading along. But then so did everyone else. I thought the book was very worthwhile.

As for "contradictions" between minor points made in different chapters, they are written by different people, with different topics and completely different perspectives. In this case, a chapter on overall economic thinking, followed by one focused on how corporations need to be altered if they are to become part of a solution rather than part of the problem.

I realize they were written by different people. It's the editors of the book who failed here. The impossibility of infinite growth is hardly a minor point. It's actually the lynchpin. Growth is a litmus test by which we should be judging new ideas. That's why it bothers me so much that the editors didn't seem to even notice what should have been an obvious logical problem. This in itself is a problem. All the people who acknowledge that growth is killing us then go on to advocate policies that depend on growth (like continuing to rely on interest-bearing loans as a means of financing business) are suffering from cognitive dissonance. In order to overcome this, we need to start identifying these contradictions. If we can't identify contradictions like this, then we can't properly evaluate good vs. bad ideas.

Katie wrote: "I realize they were written by different people. It's the editors of the book who failed here. The impossibility of infinite growth is hardly a minor point. It's actually the lynchpin. Growth i..."

I do have to disagree with that assessment. The editors of this book are perfectly well aware of that, and it is brought out in the book over and over again.