Social Responsibility Part 2 (aka It’s Called ‘Giving Back’ For a Reason)

To borrow a line from one of my favorite games of the current generation, BioShock, “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”  This iconic question was posed by Andrew Ryan, the antagonist of the story, and was the opening to a speech urging people to work only for their own success with no regard for those around them.  To Ryan, “petty morality” only served to stifle progress.  He went so far as to build a fantastical underwater city wherein “the greatest minds” could do as they pleased in order to achieve their own measures of success for their own glory, supposedly realizing the ultimate capitalist’s dream.  In the end, though, lack of regard for their fellow dreamers led the citizens of Rapture to destroy each other, themselves, and their society, leaving the streets to be overrun by murderous psychopaths and scientific abominations.

 It would actually be less scary if he used that drill for dental work.

Okay, so that might be an extremely unlikely outcome of throwing social responsibility to the wind (even barring underwater cities and gene-splicing crazies), but it does paint a fittingly grim picture of doing so.  Last week I talked about the business merits of social responsibility.  Now I would like to focus on a common counterpoint to the subject; that is, “I worked hard, and I succeeded on my own!  Nobody helped me, so why should I help everyone else?”  I will be the first to admit this point seems like a valid one on the surface, and very much irrefutable outside of moral reasoning.  However, from a logical perspective, it is fundamentally flawed when you consider how our economic system, business in general, and society on the whole operates.  Success, by and large, is often measured by financial wealth, which can only be obtained by some practice of business (even at its basest form of simple buying and selling).  Business, by its nature, requires society.  It requires other people, to sell to, to buy from, and appeal to.  Like I said last week, we are all businesspeople.  Therefore, no matter what, you owe your success to society.

This is not to take away from those who made significant sacrifices to their social lives and mental health and risks to their financial stability in order to become successful—I am only pointing out you really were not alone in your success.  It is rarely an easy road to success, no matter how you define it, and it takes copious dedication and determination.  Entrepreneurs and business visionaries keep the world going ‘round.  There is no doubt they are invaluable to society, but yet they would have achieved nothing without society.  So, when you think about it, social responsibility is really social accountability.  A company is accountable to its stakeholders, and it just so happens we all have a stake in the business oils that makes the societal cogs turn.

Hamster wheel analogies just seem irrelevant now that they all drive Kias.

Of course, there will always be those who abuse the system.  Not every person is going to be a productive member of society, and some will gladly leech off the sweat of others their entire lives.  The savvy businessperson understands people who do this are like defective units at your production plant in that they are an inevitability given an imperfect manufacturing process (in this case, the great many variables of life experiences which may produce such perspectives), work against you by being expensive (by leeching off society) and unprofitable (by not contributing), and require you to always be working on ways to minimize their occurrence.  Since we have already established society and business are one in the same, the logical solution to reduce the amount of unproductive people is to make society better.  This, of course, is done by increasing quality of life through social responsibility programs.  Giving back to society to educate people, as well as keeping them healthy and happy, will only make them more productive and successful.  As we talked about last week, this creates wealth, which leads to increased spending, which leads to the creation of more wealth, and so on.

So, there you have it:  a logical reason why we should all care about each other, if only because we care about ourselves.  I tried to be impartial when presenting this argument, but the reality is I am not only a businessperson, but also a proponent of progress.  What else is the ultimate goal of life other than progress, anyway?  Be it for our own progeny or the mankind as a whole, really everything we do is to make life better.  Progress stems from innovation, and innovation is an organizational process these days.  That is a good thing, too, as I think working as a team generally makes things easier.  Besides, like all worthwhile things in life, success means nothing without people to share it with.  In the words of Albert Pike, “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”  We are all in this together, people, and it is in all our best interest to work together to be successful together so we stay successful together.