Got Wills

There’s a lot more sites cropping up that help to make the world a more socially responsible place by shaming people and businesses who play dirty. TechCrunch has a recent article on a new service, dotherightthing.com. I agree with Michael when he says this site has a huge potential to become a site where the only people using it are smug, better than you, types that are more interested in making themselves look good by bringing others down than actually trying to hold companies responsible for their social regressions.

These startups aren’t the first to hold companies to a higher standard. Before dotherightthing.com, and other similar sites, there was epinions.com and the rating and opinion system of just about every other shopping site since around 2002 (give or take a couple years). While one or two bad opinions won’t deter me from my intended purchase, a 25% or higher rate of negatives will give me second thoughts about buying from the merchant. The main difference between the two is that the latter are primarily rating online retailers, whereas the former are trying to establish a rating system for online as well as traditional brick and mortar retailers. The other real difference is that the rash of new sites are not solely focused on buyers experiences, but also the social impact that the business is making.

The sole purpose of a business is not to make money. While making money is the primary purpose of most businesses, they also have a responsiblity to build the economy. In most cases, these two objectives go hand in hand, what’s good for one is good for the other. However, all of the thievery and dishonesty going on lately is bad for the economy (and the company), while it makes the few people who are in on it wealthy. This is a horrible direction for the upper management of these large corporations to be taking us. Now, don’t get me wrong, not all CEO’s are bad. It just seems to be the way of things, that all we hear about are the bad ones, at least they’re the ones that we remember.