[DDN] I make no profit, therefore I suck

[Norbert Bollow]

Taran Rampersad <cnd at knowprose.com> wrote:

> Non-profits require funding at market prices and spend WAY too much
> time doing so.

Well said.

Totally-profit-oriented businesses and totally-non-business-oriented
non-profits both have a strong tendency to generate unacceptably
high social costs in whatever domain is neglected by the metric
that the particular organization is using for measuring its success.

In my view the only solution to this dilemma is to push for the
adoption of metrics of success that involve honestly measuring all
significant costs and benefits of an organization's business and
philanthropic activities.

The first step towards this is to research what the significant costs
and benefits of various types of business and philanthropic activities
are, and to develop ways in which these costs and benefits can be
measured in a reasonbly reliably manner without too much additonal
cost from the introduction of the measurements.

Then precise units and methods of measurement for these costs and
benefits need to be standardized.  Without standardization, accurate
communication about the numeric quantities representing these costs
and benefits is impossible except among experts who understand the
details of the various measurement processes.

When all that is done, consumers of goods and services of all kinds
can vote with their vallets by preferring those commercial offerings
that have strong positive side effects and which effectively manage
to avoid significant negative side effects.

To the extent that consumers don't collectively decide just for moral
reasons to provide sufficient incentives for businesses to truly
work for the common good as well as for their profits, governments
can provide additional e.g. tax-based incentives (in addition to of
course being significant consumers of goods and services themselves,
so they have a lot of influence on the market already with their
buying decisions, which I hope that at least some governments will
learn to make in morally responsible ways.)

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                    http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch