Dear GKD Members, I'm Jim Forster. I am a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco Systems and have worked here since close to the beginning.
Bettina Hammerich made some very good points in her recent posting that also pertain to the current question of the role of profitability, including: > * Businesses are more likely to be efficient service providers > > * Governments and NGO's can be corrupt and/or ineffective and > * Environmental and human rights are not best served by the free market > > * The level playing field is uneven and everyone is not "free to choose" > > * MNCs are not transparent Perhaps some of the concerns in the second group can be addressed in time. I would hope, for instance, that some of the environmental effects could be reduced by burdening the products with projected environmental costs and in some way capturing the externalities. This is easier said than done but simple examples include requiring recycling fees at the time of purchase. MNCs are not transparent; neither are some NGOs and some governments. All should be pressured to be more transparent. To me, a major benefit of a for-profit goal is that the profit (or loss) is a very convenient metric that indicates whether the goods or services are useful when compared to alternatives. This metric includes factors from both the demand side (do people want it enough to pay for it) and the supply side (is it being done efficiently). I've been very suspicious of other metrics because I think they're too easily 'gamed' by insiders. Even the profit system can be cheated with an uneven playing field or without the rule of law. Without feedback from the people it's very easy to fall into the trap of 'knowing what is good for others'. I've worked at for-profit company (Cisco Systems) for a long while, and I have to say that while I think we've got great employees, we've succeeded because we learned how to listen when our customers have voted with their wallets. I trust our customer's judgment of what they want more than our expertise. -- Jim ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
