Cross posting: Post No. 2,143 - Fixing avoidable problems after the fact

This originally appeared on my main blog at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2022/01/post-no-2143-fixing-avoidable-problems.html.

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There is a lot of valid criticism of nations trying to do things like "sportswashing" their human rights abuses (distracting the world from the fact they are committing human rights abuses - egregiously so, in some cases - with international sports events), and corporations investing in philanthropic works but getting their money in ways that are damaging, unethical, or unsound. 

The abusive nations I won't cover in this post - they, and those idiots who are duped by their distractions, are repugnant, and morally indefensible. 

However, I do want to briefly consider corporate ethics. 

If we go back a few decades, we had things like widespread advertising of smoking, widespread drinking to excess, highly questionable ethics ("gifts" and other more severe forms of corruption) and misogynistic and other discriminatory abuses that are only now coming to light through the actions of the Me Too, BLM, and other movements. 

Many companies are not stupid: they know bad publicity harms them (reduced income, possibly legal costs, etc), so they started seeking, some years ago, to avoid doing the wrongdoing that exposed them to the bad publicity that hurt their profits. Some time after that they realised that "being proactively good" (i.e., inclusive, corporate social responsibility, etc) actually had direct benefits - it boosted their profits, and thus they went from doing unbridled harm through damage minimisation to anti-wrongdoing. 

This has been aided by investors/shareholders and customers setting expectations that go beyond price and immediate quality, and there are companies providing independent assessments of how ethical companies, or who are specialising in ethical superannuation, banking, investment, etc. 

In some cases, however, no matter what the company does, they cannot make up for the harm they do - and the environmental damage caused by fossil fuel companies fits into that category, in my opinion. 

(Incidentally, I am satisfied that the company I work for is doing good - sustainable water & wastewater [which is where I work], solar power, community skills building, CSR, etc.) 

Some companies are somewhere between the two - it is a grey area whether the good they are doing offsets the harm, and that is also affected by whether they are genuine in their caring (or perhaps how genuine they are). 

All of this also applies to individuals: 

• instead of just ensuring you are recycling, perhaps you should reduce using plastic in the first place, and buy goods made from recycled plastic when no plastic-free options are available (my partner is excellent at this); 
• instead of focusing on buying green power, build houses that aren't effectively tents (which is how Australian houses have been described); and 
• instead of focusing on charitable giving, get involved in preventing or fixing the problems that create poverty and other needs for assistance - for instance, be anti-racist.
  

Above all else, think deeply:

are you minimising or fixing problems that you should not be creating in the first place?

I have a few thoughts here that are worth considering, also.