by Mark Skousen on April 22, 2013
By Mark Skousen
Editor, Forecasts & Strategies
Keynote Address at Annual International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE), April 18, 2013, Orlando, Florida
“It is business that creates wealth, not countries or governments. It is businesses that decide how well or poorly off we are.” —Shlomo Maital, MIT managerial professor
Tomorrow my wife Jo Ann and I celebrate our big 40th (ruby) anniversary. We were married on April 19, Patriot’s Day, in 1973 in Utah.
Last week we went to Hawaii to celebrate. When we arrived at the Marriott Waikiki Beach Resort in Honolulu, we were given a small room with only a queen size bed and no view of the famous Waikiki Beach. I asked the desk clerk if there was any chance we could have a room with a king bed. He said nothing was available.
I suspect he knew that we used Priceline to get a discount on the room. [click to continue…]
by Mark Skousen on April 18, 2013
Whole Foods’ Better Business
Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, Harvard Business Review Press, 368 pages
Ever since the robber barons stalked the earth and Balzac expostulated that “behind every great fortune is a crime,” the media has attacked Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and anything to do with corporations. In the latest Gallup poll on the trustworthiness of various professions, business executives come out little better than lawyers and used-car salesmen, far below the ethical standings of medical doctors, engineers, and police officers.
Even as the global marketplace has raised the standard of living a hundredfold in the past century, the accusations keep pouring in—that capitalism promotes inequality, materialism, greed, environmental degradation, and short-termism on Wall Street, and that fraud, deception, and corporate welfarism would run rampant if it weren’t for Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and a host of government regulatory agencies. [click to continue…]
