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Should we really be placing all the blame for the spread of COVID-19 on the Federal Government?
Yes, trump is a miserable excuse of a president, but maybe Corporate America bears some responsibility for the spread of this pandemic …
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Every public corporation is required by law to have a disaster recovery plan in place, an overview of which is published in its annual report. Since corporations are now global, and diseases are easily transmitted worldwide with today’s global commerce, epidemics should be included as part of every corporation’s Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plan.
So why are Amazon’s shelves bare of crucial medical supplies and many daily living essentials?
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I am not a devotee of extremes in any ideological stripe. But I will accept the risk of sounding slightly right-wing on this left, left, left wing social medial platform because blaming the everything federal government with regard to COVID-19 doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Failure to prevent, and responsibility for containment should rest, in part, with our ultra wealthy network of American international corporations. The government should not have to bear it all, for a few reasons:
(1) The US government gives US corporations a slew of tax breaks and another slew of legal business loopholes in the name of furthering capitalism so as to promote a healthy economy. Assistance, when needed to survive, should not be a one-way street with companies as rich as ours. We are the wealthiest nation in the world, and corporations have flourished here because of all the breaks they have been given by the federal government. so it should behoove these industries to give something back in times of crisis, if for no other reason than to preserve this fertile ground when crises resolve and it back to business as usual. Crises are the perfect time to say THANK YOU, AMERICA, FOR HELPING ME BECOME FABULOUSLY SUCCESSFUL BY CUTTING ME SOME SLACK IN SO MANY WAYS!
That gratitude should not be left to good faith efforts alone._ It should be mandatory.
(2) If corporations do nothing to minimize the damage caused by pandemics, that damage will ultimately affect their own bottom lines, so it is in a corporation’s own best interest to become part of the solution during crisis management.
(3) When the populace of a country such as ours depends on the private sector as much as it does the public sector for life’s everyday needs, national emergency management should coordinated and not be left to the least equipped demographic—government workers—or our dilatory bureaucratic systems to administer alone. Emergencies require swift delivery of goods and services. Businesses are superhero’s at that.
(4) During global crises, profits should be limited or suspended. Otherwise you’ll have graft on a grand scale, similar to what happened with that no-name midwestern electric company and the Governor of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. No profit means the work will be much more efficient so the corporations may resume profiting ASAP. During emergencies like this one we are living through, saving lives and saving the economy should be the only end goal.
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This is not a radical idea. Corporations are already required to have plans in place for business interruption eventualities like earthquakes, floods, or bombings. Pandemics, ironically, are statistically more likely than any of those.
I have witnessed firsthand CEO’s behavior and mental state when dealing with existential threats to their own businesses all notions of graft or increased earnings or capitalizing on the disaster fly right out of their heads so the crisis can be managed So a short term prohibition on monetizing a crisis is something business leaders have done for their own sakes already. It is not a big leap to require they do the same for an immediate existential global crisis.
The top ten US Tech firms, Dell, IBM, Cisco, Sony, Tencent, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple top $3Trillion. FaceBook’s 2019 net income was $18.5 Billion. All of them are international business enterprises. They all make profits by selling products and services in countries across the globe. They know more than the government about the interplay between commerce, politics, and transport of goods. International Corporations have a direct impact on global economies and, conversely, are directly or indirectly impacted by those economies.**_ Why not use those symbiotic relationships to manage global crises and extend supply chain continuity? Our government can certainly help on the diplomacy angle when needed, (as long as trump doesn’t get involved), so there’s already a solid platform for private enterprise and government to team up in establishing plans that will help contain future pandemics and protect economies.
If you are thinking that the federal government is too much in the pocket of private enterprise (as I am) don’t we, as US citizens, have something to say about multi-billion dollar corporations willfully ignoring known risks to international business operations which put our economy and our lives in jeopardy? This pandemic was inevitable. But the risk was ignored. In 2008, banks ignored risks they had the both the capacity to comprehend and every reason to avoid. Banking has been cowed for the time being. But banking is not the only sector guilty of willfully ignoring risks in pursuit of profit. Again, look at Amazon. It is contributing a pittance to this crisis. What about Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Dow Chemical, Walmart? All of them could be helping. Where are they?
The US economy is on a roller coaster now, partly because the private sector has no plans to mitigate the contagion while they are in large part responsible for it. US international corporations making billions in profits annually can afford to develop living plans that would limit the transmission of a pandemic. Yet there is no evidence of any such plans having been put in place thus far—and the federal government can’t do it for them. Pandemics are no different from floods, or earthquakes, or terrorist attacks—all of which have well-defined contingency procedures as part of a firm's Disaster Recovery responsibility. Business Continuity is not only essential to a company’s customers and stockholders, it is also essential when a corporation provides products or services to a large segment of the population or has a major stake in an economic sector.
The interdependence between the US government and private enterprise is well beyond my understanding. But I am aware that it is complex and delicately balanced and nuanced with each beholden to the other in different ways. Supreme Court Jerk John Edwards and his right-heavy court decided that corporations are people too, but they failed to assign responsibilities associated with corporate citizenship. My two cents on that: Proactive management plans for global crises, such as pandemics, must be in place and up-to-date if our corporate citizens want to do business globally. The plans would function like green cards with immigration. No plan—no earnings.
Of course, corporations cannot foresee every possible business threat, but they should not be allowed to be willfully blind to global threats like pandemics because, as we are seeing in real time, lack of such planning can bring an economy to its knees. At a minimum, international supply chain continuity should be a core responsibility for top level management of international business entities—because, like banking, supply chain failure has a domino effect and can therefore severely damage a healthy economy. Pandemic-wise, supply chains are proving just a critical. Annual profits in the billions should come with corresponding responsibility to the people who purchase products since it is they who allow those exorbitant profits to be realized. It’s time for a change.
I’m all for capitalism, but responsibility should not be a one-way street where corporations bear none and governments bear it all. That must end. When there is no corporate accountability, people suffer and die and so do small businesses.
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Isn’t it time we, as US citizens, insist on moving toward benevolent capitalism?
The Epidemics America Got Wrong
Government Inaction or delay have shaped the course of many infectious disease outbreaks in our country. .
#mywork #capitalism #socialism #coronavirus #COVID-19 #pandemic #Benevolent_Capitalism #Rapacious_Capitalism #worldeconomy #USeconomy #follow-the-money @Shelenn Ayres #diaspora #pluspora
