The pope came right out and said that business should not be focused on profit as its primary end/purpose. MBA programs, Western Capitalism, stock market investors, and rich conservative business people might be gagging on this. The Vatican usually goes wishy washes on this issue by saying that business should be concerned about the poor. This allows us to focus on profits no matter the human/environmental cost, and then throw some charity bones to the resulting problems. This pope is blunt. This could hurt me and maybe him, in Vatican fund raising from the rich. I invest in a stock. If the CEO of that company focuses on issues other than profits, the price of the stock might go down. The value of my investment will decrease. So I pay for whatever "good" the CEO tries to do. We are all in this together. I'd rather this than burn for being greedy. If the pope speaks for God, "Greed" is the new ticket to hell. It used to contraception.
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Having lived in Italy for the first 30 years of my life before moving to the USA, I testify that they have a very different culture.
ReplyDeleteI spoke with a financial adviser about my pension funds here in the USA, and she said: "my father died of cancer because of smoking cigarettes, but I am happy to invest in tobacco stocks because they provide good profit". Even the most greedy person in Italy would be ashamed to utter that sentence in public. I was horrified and opted for a "social fund". I then read the terms of the fund, and was even more horrified by what they considered "socially good" and completely opted out. I prefer to starve to death in my old age than be accomplice to the extreme and reckless greed of the stock market. Would it change anything? No, I'm too small of fish. But I don't want to be part of that greed.
Kudos to the pope.
It still is.
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