Business for a better world? The good, the bad and the ambiguous

When old certainties crumble what fills the vacuum is often reminiscent of poetic horrors that shamble towards Bethlehems of various kinds. Mainstream capitalism, wounded by its near catastrophic failure in the Great Recession of 2008 noted the bad press that went with its lastest failure and reached out for makeovers that positioned it as friends of the people. From A&W to Walmart with several stops in between and alongside them many for-profit enterprises now expend much of their capital, both financial and social, to convince the buyers that fund them that they are actually not as single-mindedly self-interested as many thought. At TorontotheBetter we call this trend "cred appropriation" and, in its most extreme form, cred expropriation, suctioning up the ideas and values validated by social movements that did the hard work of campaigning for causes. What's an innocent consumer to do with mega corporations shouting out their environmental empathy and their love of small children, dogs and grannies (of course)? Be very afraid, we argue, These late coming social consciences simultaneously decry the taxation and accountability are the necessary coniditions of any serious attempt to right the wrongs of inequality and environmental catastrophe that scourge our world from east to west and back. Without a coherent politics there can be no redemptive change. Enterprise, like civic society, can play roles, but wishing and half measures will not get us where we have to go.