Achieving sustainability

The world "sustainability" has become a buzzword for green -- that is, environmental -- initiatives. What it really means is finding a way to continue to survive. In the US, everyone has been patting themselves on the back for working so hard toward sustainability. So let's apply this concept to business and commerce, too, shall we?

I've mentioned before, I admire greed. I wish I was greedy enough to devote a little more of my time to purely money-making activities. Alas.....

Greed is also the label that the Comrade and his kind paste on "personal incentive." Most people, sane people, anyway, do things mainly because they believe they will benefit from their activities somehow. They can be greedy for love, greedy for praise, greedy for Cocoas Puffs. Anything they value. (Huh, what, exactly are politicians greedy for? Just a thought.)

In business, and in ALL business, whether it's manufacturing, professional services, non-professional services like a day-job, whatever, usually what people are going for is money, something a little above and beyond what it costs them to do business. "Buy cheap; sell dear" and so forth. Otherwise, why would they do it?

Even unions understand that people can't really work for less than it costs them to live. Unions require a certain level of sustainability for their members. Of course, now they've gotten way ambitious and probably rather pie-in-the-sky, but that's another story.

The happiest people in the world must be those who've managed to make money doing what they like to do.  You will find a lot of millionaires in this category. Many of them simply love the challenge of it -- beating the market, taking a failing company and turning it around, inventing stuff. They've found that golden path of creating/producing/serving something that other people are willing to pay them for.

They've managed to sustain themselves, to get their personal passions and interests to give them back more than they invest in them.

"Profit," that vile and disgusting mark of triumphant greed, is basically nothing more than sustainability. A business must make a profit to survive, or can it afford to survive? Oh, if you can't make a living selling those unique landscapes you spend your weekends painting, you'd probably still do it. But unless you can sell a painting for more than your cost of materials, time, skill, and imagination, your painting thing just isn't sustainable. It becomes a hobby. You have to sustain yourself doing something else.

Profits aren't evil. Profits represent the good health of business and ensure its sustainability. If a business isn't making a profit, it has to become nothing more than something you might do in your spare time, funded by money you get doing something else that is profitable.

If some authority type, like say, the feds, makes your business unsustainable by, say, a ridiculous amount of minute regulation, or by compelling you to spend your profits on stuff that may/may not be necessary to conduct your business.... your business may no longer be sustainable. Many businesses right now find themselves in that situation. The feds are grinding them into the dirt, stopping their profitability, turning commerce into something like a hobby that they may or may not be able to afford to continue.

And if you do make any kind of profit (filthy lucre!) you can bet Uncle Sam will be at your front door with his hand out -- and clutching a pistol and/or threat of imprisonment in the other hand.

Yet if we aren't allowed to sustain ourselves, who will sustain us? Even the government lives off the profits of American business. That is, all of our hard work and labor sustains not only ourselves, but also the government. The government has no other source of income but us.

So exactly what the hell is up with the marxists? Shit for brains, maybe?

Like, way back in the 1960s and 1970s there was this very socialist newspaper columnist named Nicholas something. I'll never forget reading one of his columns one day where he raged against some "fat cat" corporation, demanding:  "This corporation employs 30,000 people! What good are they doing?" Had to laugh at that one.

Save the Republic.