Council for Inclusive Capitalism (really Technocracy)

“The Council for Inclusive Capitalism (CIC)  is a global movement of CEO leaders doing business in ways that lead to a more inclusive and sustainable economy.”

The Council acknowledges that capitalism raises billions out of poverty.  But “. . . to address growing inequality and climate change in the 21st century, capitalism must adapt.”

The CIC considers that companies’ goals need to expand.  Traditionally, the purpose, the raison d’etre of companies, is to create value for owners or shareholders.  After all, it is the owners who have “skin in the game”.  They take all the risk when they invest in the company.  It stands to reason that the goal of company policy should be to create value for owners.

CIC wants companies’ goals to create value for all stakeholders of the company.  A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the company.  This includes shareholders, of course.  But it also includes employees, customers, suppliers, and local communities.

But it is wrong to think of shareholder capitalism as excluding everyone else.  A company needs happy customers and employees to thrive.  There also needs to be a win-win relationship between the company and its suppliers.  So far, shareholder capitalism is very much like stakeholder capitalism. The problem arises when the company is required to create value for stakeholders at the expense of the owners.  Here, there is a divergence.  Shareholder capitalism says that the owners are not required to and should not create value for others at their expense. This is what is being asked of them in the current commercial climate.  

A simple example will make this clear.  If I open a newsstand, my ultimate purpose is to make a living to support myself and my family.  I do this by providing customers with newspapers, magazines and whatever else I decide to sell.  I’m providing a service that creates value not only for myself but also for customers, suppliers, and the community.  If I hire people, I create value for them as well.  Nevertheless, I must never lose site of the fact that I'm in business to provide for myself and my family.

But what if the community decides that I should be handing out newspapers gratis to people in the neighborhood who cannot afford them.  Am I required to take a reduction of profit to create “value” for the community?  Stakeholder capitalism’s answer is yes.  Shareholder capitalism says yes to the extent it will further my business interests.  The test is always the owners’ business interests.  

What is the Council’s agenda and how will they implement it?

The CIC, like the World Economic Forum (WEF), promotes stakeholder capitalism.  All businesses should be inclusive (of all stakeholders) regardless of whether this is good or bad for business.  For example, energy giant Repsol has committed to “. . . promote inclusion of gender, disabilities and promoting LGTBI-inclusive environment, with a goal of reaching 35% of women in leadership positions by 2025.”  

This is all well and good if there is a choice between a woman and man for the same job and they are equally qualified.  But what if a man is more qualified than the women who have applied for the position.  Repsol, it seems, will take the less qualified woman so they may reach their “inclusivity” goal.  This does not make for good business.

The CIC also makes assumptions about what is good for stakeholders.  The primary assumption is that there is an anthropogenic climate crisis that we can solve by reducing our carbon emissions to zero.  They are betting the store on this assumption.

But what if they are wrong?  There are many climatologists who say that there is no climate crisis, certainly not a man-made one.  There are many who say that atmospheric carbon levels have very little effect on climate.  There are data that show rises in atmospheric carbon levels follow temperature rises rather than precipitate them.

An unelected organization that claims to have the expertise to know what our problems are and how we can solve them is the very essence of a technocracy.  In other words, inclusive capitalism is not capitalism at all.  The CIC is not promoting some new version of capitalism.  It is promoting technocracy.  It just isn't honest enough to say so.

The CIC, like the WEF, uses nice platitudes.  Who doesn’t want to be inclusive?  Everyone wants a sustainable economy.  But when nations try to implement green policies such as reduced carbon emissions, the results are usually disastrous.  Sri Lanka is a prime example. 

As reported in the Epoch Times, in May 2021 a policy was instituted “to make Sri Lanka the world’s first fully organic farming nation, banning all importation of agrochemicals, including fertilizers and pesticides.

“. . . food production plummeted immediately (between 20 percent and 70 percent, depending on the crop), severely impacting the local supply of foods and major export crops, such as tea. . . . 

“Farmers make up some 30 percent of the Sri Lankan labor force. And their output of rice, a staple of the local diet, fell between 40 and 50 percent during the growing season, known as Maha. As a result, Sri Lanka imported some 330,000 tons of rice in the first three months of 2021, compared with the 15,000 tons imported in 2020.

“By May 2022, the government said that it would reinstate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but it was too late: many farmers had left the land or had been bankrupted, and no funds were available to import fertilizer.” 

Now, Sri Lankans are suffering from serious food and energy shortages.  There is social unrest (riots).  The heads of government have resigned and have fled the country.  You won't see Sri Lanka on the CIC website.

In the Netherlands, radical green policies will decimate the nation’s agriculture industry putting 30% of its farmers out of business.  The Netherlands is the second largest exporter of food on the planet.

Yet, here is USAID Administrator Samantha Powers, asking Congress to fund countries’ move to “natural solutions” such as using manure and compost to solve the fertilizer shortage.  This is a woman who, like most of the Biden administration, is eminently unqualified for her job.  She has no background in agriculture nor in business, yet she opines with the confidence of an expert on these very topics.  Ms. Powers, manure and compost are full of nitrogen!  That’s what the Dutch government wants its farmers to reduce!

To summarize, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a misnomer.  It should be called the Council for Technocracy.  The Council promotes inclusivity at the expense of companies’ business interests.  It assumes that there is a global anthropogenic climate crisis that can be solved by reducing carbon emissions to zero.  

This is a recipe for disaster as can be seen in the countries that have adopted the green agenda of the CIC.