Nice thought. Do you always know everything a company does you invest in before they do it?

If you all ready own the stock and the company gives a bunch of money to something you don't want to support without announcing it first, to late. You were just forced to support it against your will, that action should be criminal.

It's really quite suprising that even this group has missed this: This IS good. Not because the businesses have decided to do good or not but because business is ALWAYS good. It is societal and customer demand that fluctuates from good to bad. Meaning, if the people want low prices (at whatever cost), companies like Monsanto can create products that will increase the harvest that a farmer can get out of his fields. That crop will have some features to it that will be bad for the environment and bad for the health of the consumer but will have a low cost. If the people decided what they want more is food that they can feel good about eating and feeding to their kids and are willing to pay more to get it then organic farmers can produce that. Business ALWAYS goes wherever they feel the dollar will flow. That's all these companies have done. Their leadership feels that, presumably because it is important to them personally, others will choose to pay more for whatever they produce because it is environmentally friendly/responsible. IF they did not feel that their were customers willing to pay enough for that often enough for them to make a profit doing it, I assure you, they would not do it that way for long.
Where this breaks down is when governmental regulation steps in and says "you now have to do it this way." If we are talking about utilities that are governmentally owned/subsidiezed then I think that still may be the right thing to do but if I can't care for my patients the way I feel is best and the patients want to be cared for because of regulations then that is always BAD for the society.
It's my opinion that the right way for society to change in the environmentally responsible direction is for our tax dollars that are allocated for that to be used for educating the public so that those that can will choose to make their dollars flow towards environmentally responsible companies. The Energy Star rating is probably a decent and successful example of this. I can hardly find an appliance anymore that doesn't have that Energy Star on it. Hopefully that is not because you can just buy a rubber stamp for it but because it gave the companies a profit incentive to make them that way because the consumers felt it was better and sometimes got a tax credit for buying an energy star rated appliance.

So sell your stock, or don't buy from that company. No one has a gun to your head.

It's questionable if you can look Hispanic, since some people who have been in Latin America for many generations and speak Spanish with the normal accent of their country are light skinned. Sometimes they say Hispanic, non-European. The whole system of identifying race vs ethnicity is questionable.

You have to pay to get rid of your human waste and other waste you throw away.

Susanne,

I agree and gave you a thumbs up, but for me there needs to be a point cleared up in your statement.

Its a great and noble thing for the owner of a wildly successful company to support an altruistic goal with his/her money made from that wildly successful company.

I do not believe it a great thing for the company to do (unless the owner is the only owner) because they may have some goal that I as a stock holder in that company do not agree with and should not risk my money on that venture. If they have stockholders its a form of theft.

Many people consider water to be the commons, owned by all, but I find these same people don't care for full private ownership / control of any means of production. There's nothing really special about water in that regard. It's just an easy case for nationalization, so they latch onto it. I agree about accurate pricing. Subsidizing it is not good for the environment.

Good article, forwarded the link to a few people. One of which I will definitely hear how terrible it is. I cant really help it if she is an idiot, but it is fun to push her buttons upon occasion and this will do it.

"How about McDonald's around here having "Hispanic employee of the month" posters in their drive-through? I don't know what the award is, but every time I see the poster, I want a Whopper..."
Do they still do that? How is that different from just employee of the month b/c all their employees are Hispanic. Most people there are hispanic. I hear the non-hispanics speak proficient Spanish with an English accent. (I know b/c I speak Spanish with a moderate English accent.) I rarely hear English, except the people who deal with customers are very proficient in English. The McDonald's in my area are a MODEL of excellent customer service. I've never seen any of that employee of the month stuff here.

Well written.

If I could I would say its criminal for anything other than an individual to provide funds to a charity or cause of any kind. Once its in a entity that has stock holders some of those stock holders may be being forced to contribute to something they do not support and would stand against. That is an initiation of force against that stock holder and should be a criminal act.

Yes. And if the CEO of a wildly successful company gives away money, it's not her money to give away. The company should do a stock buyback or dividend so that the shareholders can choose to give their money away. They may chose to keep it, give it to a national charity, or give it to a neighbor they know is struggling. In any case, that's better than the company being generous with shareholder wealth.

In some areas (use Utah for an example) there has always been some water scarcity. In the late 1930ies and early 1940ies there was a project called the central utah water project. Its an example of true capitalism at work in the water availability.

The solution was not to conserve to capture and use. A series of dams were planned on several rivers, most on the severe river which starts and ends in Utah without ever leaving the state and the water end up in a salt flat evaporating away. The creation of these dams (only about 3 were ever made) would have provided more than enough drinking water, water for farming and every other need one could conceive. It was at that time considered more than Utah could ever use even if the population increased 1000%.

Today people talk conservation rather than capture and use. Sounds an awful lot like atlas shrugged to me.

how so?

It's a flawed philosophy - if a company focuses on what they can give away, there won't be much left when all is said and done to grow the company.

Usually these "Socialist-ly (ir)responsible" companies look at one thing - can I use this cause to make me money? Worked for one of thse - the stated "primary purpose" was to promote Arab-Jew harmony in the middle east... realized after a few months the real purpose was to use this as a means to get customers to generate business - by the time it was over, they not only didn't do much of anything toward this "great socialist program", they missed the mark entirely (not to mention, numerous payrolls, supplier payments, and equipment maintenance funding needed to stay in business).

It's a great and noble thing for a wildly successful company to support an alturistic goal... but first, you have to become a wildly successful business. Starting a business to give it all away builds nothing except a hole.

yep. this is a good article, Lionel. thanks.