Charity and Business

Recently it has become very fashionable for large businesses to give money to charitable causes and advertise that they do so. This causes me to wonder. I certainly don't begrudge the cause its funding, but I wonder sometimes about the businesses doing the giving. It seems to me that the marketing team is trying to associate the product with a cause to increase sales. but unlike direct giving or buying directly from a charity, an almost negligible percentage of the purchase price ends up at the charity. (If you buy popcorn or wrapping paper or candy from a charity they usually end up with about half of the purchase price.)

It seems to me that the main impact of this giving, besides increasing sales, is to raise the price of products. A better course of action might be to keep the price lower and let me do my own giving. A counter argument is that the giving does not increase prices, it only decreases stockholder profits. I think the same argument applies to stockholder, let them do their own giving, especially since they are hardly the “fat cats” or “1%” that they are often portrayed as. Do you have have a retirement account? You are a stockholder. You pay money into a retirement account, and the retirement account managers buy stock, bonds, and other investments to increase the holdings, and thus the payout when you retire. (The exact details are really complicated, and some government run retirements work a little differently, but this is the basic idea.)

This whole phenomenon seems to stem from a very unhealthy idea that being in business or making money is bad. Business is good. Remember your history class, the part in the beginning where they talked about people settling down and specializing in tasks and how civilization is a direct result of this specialization and resultant food surplus. Specialization leads to business. The only alternatives are being hunter gatherers in small bands or having a command economy, one where the king owns everything and everyone is basically a slave. For various reasons both of those are unpalatable to most people. Think of it another way. Is the money you make evil? Is it bad that you make money? Of course not, you feed your family, pay the rent, and try to do something fun once in a while.

These are just some thoughts I had.