All Businesses Must Freely Give Back to The Community
- Vicent Nemeyimana
- May 22, 2018
- Innovation + Entrepreneurship
Every single day, I receive promotional text messages from MTN, Airtel, Africell, onto my phone. Sometimes, it’s about CocaCola, KFC, Cafe Javas, Safe Boda, Jumia, or something personal and specific like #MTNPulse and their annoying calls on a number like +205 (for MTN)!
All I know is that I didn’t sign up somewhere that my phone number should be distributed to different companies and businesses for advertisement, and, if I ever signed such an agreement, it was out of ignorance (not on my part, but, just as in the case of Facebook, maybe, such terms were hidden deep somewhere that I couldn’t see or understand them when I signed). But that is not a problem! Here is the real problem;
I have never received even 10K from MTN or Airtel or Africell as a fair payback for what my data does for them! Of course, even if I understood that my number shall be used for adverts, I would still sign up (I don’t intend to eat my data) but then, surely, isn’t it ethically, morally, and even legally upright for such companies to always give back to the community for the community’s inputs into their businesses? Actually, Facebook is even better. We use it for free and, in exchange, it uses our data to make money. So how about we also get Sim-cards and initiate calls for free in exchange for our data to be used for advertisement?
And you are all pointing your fingers at MTN, Africell, and Airtel only, aren’t you? No, these companies are just a drop in the ocean of the unfairness that common people experience from corporations and businesses in capitalism! Every company, every business, every entity, including your (the one who is reading this) small company or business draws its inputs, strength, and survival from us, the community, the clients!
Entrepreneurs like to think and feel like, wow, I made it, but the truth of the reality is, we made it! There is nothing that is possible in your business without the input of others, and so, giving back to the community is not charity, but a moral, legal, and ethical obligation. It’s Blaise Pascal who said that we shouldn’t say, my book, my article, my ideas, my philosophy, but instead we should use ‘We’ wherever there is ‘I’ since there is no idea, article, book, or philosophy we put out that doesn’t bear the inputs of others, of the community. Of course, we (I inclusive) still call things, books, and ideas our own, but Pascal is simply reminding us that the community should be at the back of our mind for it truly contributes a lot to whatever we are or have.
There is nothing that pisses me like factories and industries, and then banks and all other financial institutions. These businesses draw from the society more than they shall ever give back. Banks, on one hand, are responsible for the whole mess; the banking or money system is terribly dangerous and death precipitating! (I will come back to this when discussing the details of money economy and how banks and governments control money).
Industries and factories make billions of profits at the expense of lives and livelihood of the cheap labor they exploit, the water, air, and environmental pollution they cause, the dangerous wastes and fumes they release affecting lives of millions, and the resources (raw materials) they use and consequently displacing families, grabbing land (consider Andrew Mwenda’s argument), and replacing subsistence farming (having enough for home consumption) with commercial farming (causing hunger) and, of course, encroaching on those resources that were naturally free and accessible to all and turning them into money and property for only the few (consider the latest moves of sand and murram being declared minerals or even the desperate moves by URA to tax Bibles and Qurans). And yet all these businesses never give back part of their profits to the community. And your businesses don’t do that too.
Entrepreneurs who are so much driven by profits think that they are rightfully charging for the services or products (maybe intellectual property, counselling, business and legal consultancy, mechanics, authors, musicians, movie makers, TVs and Radios or software developers) but which one of the above services or products is possible without the input of society, of nature, of our whole world? Nothing, not even a song, a book, or a software!
So why charge the community for the same product or service that is theirs in the first place? Maybe you can say you need some cover for your inputs during refashioning or designing the product, and I ask, why do you charge more than you put in? Maybe to make
a profit and even enlarge your services, and I ask, why do you charge too much to make too much profits?
a profit and even enlarge your services, and I ask, why do you charge too much to make too much profits?
No matter how far we extend the matter, we still stand defeated! And even the above excuses hold simply because you paid and suffered for inputs, but what if you had actually paid for nothing? What if the inputs were freely available and the community freely participated to produce the product? Then we would be freely and cooperatively subduing the world, sharing the improved products and services among ourselves and none would be losing or gaining at the expense of others; we would all be winning!
But things are not like that outside here! Anyone’s success equals someone’s failure. We are in the game of failing each other. Businesses and corporations are squeezing money and profits out of the community without giving back. And you call that development?
Which kind of development sees people go to bed hungry, children live without medicine, and mothers die on hospital floors? Which development sees the rise of industries and banks while citizens get thrown out of their accommodations, children get chased from schools, and parents watch their loved ones die in war or refugee camps? What exactly has gone wrong with our souls that we feel proud of being innovative entrepreneurs when hundreds of others go hungry because of us?
I am not saying you are the culprit and I am not; we have all fallen! It’s a huge and complex system that even looks uncontrollable and we can’t just change it. The motto is; we either be brutal, tricky, innovative, and assertive and survive (just for now) or we become nice, welcoming, inclusive, and sympathetic and risk dying, extinction! Isn’t it?
But wait! What if we are in an illusion? Are you sure this is the only way we can survive? For how long? Do you remember Jesus’ wisdom; life is not measured by how much one owns or even how long one lives. Well, we shall have time for practical ways to deal with this or at least lessen impacts. Meanwhile, think about these;
1. What your business ever given back to society for free?
2. How much profits do you make on your product or service or in your business? Can’t you adjust your charges and still survive?
3. For those services and products you develop minus money and property inputs, how about you give them for free? Or at very low price?
4. Is there a way you can always have the free version of your product or service so that the weak and poor can access it?
5. How is your business friendly to the society and environment? Are you polluting people’s water, air, and, or green nature? Is your business endangering animals and the whole ecosystem? If yes, can’t you do something?
6. How about labor? Are you exploiting cheap labor, paying peanuts, having them work for long hours, working in dangerous zones with no PPE or insurance? Is there a way you can increase their salary, improve their lives, and still make profits?
There are various ways we can participate in restoring humanity and our mother earth, even in our century, think hard.
God bless you
#SacredEntrepreneurship is a branch of The Complete You Ministry
