Is Capitalism in Trouble?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/12/is-capitalism-in-trouble/354683/

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Signs are proliferating that the social "license to operate" that business depends on could be lost. (Joshua Lott/Reuters

On a Wednesday in mid-September, some 30 entrepreneurs from around the world put on boots and blue jeans and spent four hours digging out Namaste Solar, a solar-power company in Boulder, Colorado, from under three feet of mud.

The international cleanup crew was in town for the annual conference of B Lab, a global organization of for-profit businesses (known as B Corps) that choose to legally bind themselves to meeting social and environmental objectives. Namaste Solar is one of the world’s 830 certified B Corps, and after flooding of near-Biblical proportions, some assembled peers decided to lend a hand.

“As we were leaving, we got on the bus pulling away, and we saw six or seven Namaste employees having a team hug,” Andrew Kassoy, a co-founder of B Lab and one of the diggers, told me. “People said, ‘That’s what this community is about—it is about businesses taking collective action to serve society.’?”

We are well into the age of Oprah, so there is nothing too remarkable about corporate group hugs, particularly if your company has namaste in its name. Nor is there anything too special about groups of businesspeople building team spirit through volunteer work and assertions of the social value their labors provide.


***personally, i'm tired of turning to people who break things for plans on how to put it back together.