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Business Sustenance

Demand Political System Change

October 8, 2018
Business Sustenance, System change
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On the day that the IPCC have released a report warning there’s only a short time to act before the life of millions of people will become significantly more difficult, a quick and short note on how to avoid human suffering on a mass scale: cut back on consumption of material goods, replace with consumption of education and culture. Cut back on steel- and concrete buildings, replace with wood-structured buildings. Cut back on flying and driving, replace with remote access meetings. Demand political change. Act to reduce inequality. Replace growth-oriented economic thinking with sustainable ideas. Leave coal, oil and gas in the ground, replace with renewables. Reform the money system. Introduce a lifetime cap on individual resource usage. Install universal basic income globally.

MoBoS – Master of Business of Sustenance

April 28, 2018
Business Sustenance, Education, Maintenance, Uncategorized
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Martin Parker writes in the Guardian about “Why we should bulldoze the business school”.

This is an important idea, and recommended way of action. The business case, or the philosophy case, rather, for scrapping all business schools is clear. In their present form, they are (a very big) part of the problem, and not part of the solution any longer. To replace them, a new type of business school is needed: The business of sustenance school. These schools will train people to master the business of sustenance (that is living within limits, in other words). We need MoBoSs instead of MBAs.

“The sort of world that is being produced by the market managerialism that the business school sells is not a pleasant one. It’s a sort of utopia for the wealthy and powerful, a group that the students are encouraged to imagine themselves joining, but such privilege is bought at a very high cost, resulting in environmental catastrophe, resource wars and forced migration, inequality within and between countries, the encouragement of hyper-consumption as well as persistently anti-democratic practices at work.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school?CMP=fb_gu

 

Forget Sustainability, Think Sustenance

June 15, 2014
Business Sustenance, Maintenance
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Some of us still talk about ‘business sustainability’ as an answer to the limits we’re hitting everywhere, in energy, in clean air and water, in natural resources, in purchasing power of the middle class, in debt-based material growth etc. It’s a useful idea to forget about sustainability. If something can’t be sustained, it won’t be sustained, no matter how hard we hope. If the true costs for diminishing and permanently used-up resources was charged to business beneficiaries of those resources, these businesses would close their doors tomorrow.

If we, as individuals, were forced to live within the boundaries of one planet, instead of four planets or twenty planets, our lifestyle, as we know it, would be finished today. The fact is, many of our current activities can’t be maintained for much longer, even if we continued to ignore the moral problem of global inequality, or the problem of 1% of the people grabbing and using up wealth and resources on behalf of the rest of us, and even on behalf of their own grandchildren. For both businesses and individuals, it’s more than just a question of sustainability of operations. It’s about sustenance as a business, about existence.

What to do, if you are a business owner? Firstly, make sure your company has understood the situation. Secondly, make sure you have hired the best thinking available to help decide the right course of action. Thirdly, don’t waste any more time hoping that a solution appears out of thin air and bails you out at the last minute.