Allowed Only: Businesses With A Soul

With trust of government at an all-time low we need corporations to live and breathe by doing the right thing.

Massive deregulation is on the horizon, massive tax cuts are on the horizon. This means companies should have a season of doing whatever they want to grow, invest in themselves and try things that wouldn’t be permissible in a tighter market.

We have to throw ideology aside for a second and think realistically what this means to us as business owners as well as what it means as consumers. [Full disclosure: I was a Democrat until about two days ago. Now I’m politically agnostic.]

During my months long writhing in pain over the Donald Trump campaign trail, visibly over Facebook, I was astutely listening to everything he said. My news source of choice was CBS which basically played Trump on a five minute loop the whole campaign, so I listened.

We have to recognize that he’s only human and so as a president he is going to play to his strengths which is making deals and building things. The rest of society be damned but at least we’ll have pretty golf courses with a view.

New Infrastructure

While the country was headed this way anyway, decreased regulations and tax breaks will inevitably let companies just sort of go for it. Ford, for example, is completely rethinking its place in the industry. Over the next couple of years you’ll see Ford transition from being an automaker to being an auto and transportation company.

How is that different? Automakers make cars. But the more people there are, the more cars there are,the more traffic jams, the less effective traveling via car becomes and the more likely younger energy conscious city dwellers are to give up on cars all together. And thus, sales decline.

A transportation company, however, provides a service. Car sharing, group transporting, and other alternative means of travel. Not just everybody owning a car. This is where Ford was headed no matter who got in office. But now establishing that grid will have a lot of less red tape. But it could also be a sloppy disaster as competitors move into the space and try to dismantle each other. They’ll have to come up with some type of uniform structure or our high way system will be like phone chargers or memory cards.

Sticking up for the marginalized

The other problem that arises with deregulation is marginalization. The prime example is what resulted in the New Deal. The New Deal was one of the biggest, if not the biggest government lead infrastructure deals in our country’s history. Trump referenced the New Deal indirectly when comparing himself to FDR. What’s comparable here is that the New Deal prevented electric companies from neglecting rural areas of the country in favor of cities.

For electric companies, while it was profitable to run electricity out to rural towns, it wasn’t as profitable as running wires to big cities. So to maximize profits, rural towns were ignored. The New Deal forced electric companies to basically have a healthy balance between city and rural infrastructure investments. Trump’s plan for the Trillion dollar spending plan on infrastructure is to partner with for-profit developers to improve roads, interstates, airports and so on and give them tax break incentives to invest in public facilities.

That would get national infrastructure banks to invest in American communal spaces but it would come at a cost to Americans. NIB’s usually like to invest in things that have a clear ROI like toll roads, airports and rail systems. Parks and community centers have a hard time justifying their own existence even though they are great for communities trying to attract talented workers with say, young children or even dogs.

Since wise investments are at the top of concern for a national infrastructure bank, they would also evaluate that making something that’s good into something that’s great will be lower cost than making something that is unthinkable into something that is liveable. That’s great news for cities that are already doing pretty good. Upgrade your public subway into a high-speed railway? Amen! Replace piping that’s contaminating water with lead to a struggling population of displaced working class Americans? What’s the ROI gonna be on that? Let’s go with the high-speed rail.

This is why it’s so important for companies to have a soul. To be aware and conscious. Every company that exists needs to have a company culture of thinking about the greater good. Our generation, the Millennial generation, is thinking in that way. We care about the environment. We care about disenfranchised people. We have to keep that principled based approach headed into the next decade because the old money won’t do it.

Where we once depended on liberal principles to be the conscientious voice for our environment and for working class people, there is now a void. Laws did nothing but make the unconscientious really pissed off. They retaliated with all 3 branches of government being controlled by people who do not care about any of that.

And so it is up to us.

Don’t buy from vendors who are sending you things with a large imprint. Don’t make that crap in demand. Buy organic. Buy electric. Buy Zero-VOC. In your own business create a charitable program. Reserve part of your profits for something good. Choose to serve the underserved. Be good. Be authentic. Shy away from the superficial, right?

We don’t want one Panem and the rest of the country to be subjugated districts. When the tide rises all ships rise. That’s on the public now. Not the government. That’s where it should have always been. Democracy is in the dollar now. Votes, we learned are futile.

A couple other blogs I run worth checking out

Color Theory Blog — New Year, New Hues

Colors Theory’s Color Combo of the year

Click here to read….

The Connection — Finding Work During the Slow Season

ColorTheoryConnect.com is the employee and trade partner portal to our business. I write a weekly business article there for the sake of my team and trade partners.

Click Here to Read…

Alright, that’s all folks. Like it if you like it!