Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
(Sir Walter Scott)
The clash between non-profit purists and innovators is blocking progress of the European Commission's Social Business Intiative, warns Filippo Addarii.
Writing on the EU Social Business Initative (SBI) in an article for Civil Society. he describes the strategy of mapping social enterprise across Europe and collecting national statistics.
“This strategy doesn’t solve the fundamental problem at the core of SBI that surfaced again in the November meeting. That is the clash between the purists of non-profit who look for incremental benefits under a new tag and the innovators who see SBI as a third way between competitiveness and social inclusion policies.
The stumbling blocks are the usual ones: the role of private investments and their profitability, special protection from competition rules, privileged access to public funding, and aversion to using the transformational power of the web and new technologies for public engagement. ”
Describing lobbyists and vested interests who’ve re-invented themselves he says:
“They rebranded themselves as social innovators and entrepreneurs because these are the new tags to get the ears and funding of Brussels. The Commission ended up opening the floor to every stakeholder claiming a place at the table.”
A familiar lament for us, who'd launched in the UK 9 years ago, with a business proposal to tackle poverty. It applied our non-dividend distrbuting model re-investing at least 50% of profit in a social goal and said this:
"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”
In 2006, we'd gone head to head with vested interests challenging Ukraine's oligarchs over the plight of children abandonded due to disability or poverty, to state care. This was the 'Marshall Plan' proposal for social enterprise on a national scale in Ukraine, with vulnerable children as the primary focus.
To protect this work from vested economic interests aka "mafia", after submission to government in 2006, we'd published it in a prominent web journal the next year and in 2008, the opportunity arose to introduce it to the EU Citizens Consultation where it remained visible to all for more than 3 years.
That was before the EU Social Business Consultation which came up with some very familiar ideas. So familiar that I drew the attention of my MEP Sir Graham Watson to the possibility of plagiarism. He acknowledged the similarities and forwarded my complaint to Commissioner Michel Barnier
In 2011, I'd also made the point of introducing our work and our model to the EU social business competition in Naples with an entry for "Turning Camorra premises into a social enterprise". This would be at least a defence of our intellectual property, whether or not we were successful with our entry.
Commissioner Barnier’s response is to say that these concepts were the result of ‘high level’ discussions and that they weren’t aware of our work, which rather undermines the very point of a public consultation, business competition and indeed the point of having a democracy.
In an article on rethinking capitalism, written before his death in 2011, Terry Hallman drew attention to the problem with these words:
"Hallman concludes that social business and social enterprise must be done by working backwards, from the problem: identify the worst social conditions in any given location, then analyze why the problem(s) exist. This method will always reveal all factors and barriers. Only then can the problem be understood, and then possibly fixed. But, he notes, barriers are often found in various organizations who are supposed to be trying to fix the problem, but have vested interests in direct conflict with achieving actual solutions."
Two years earlier in a discussion on Skoll Social Edge he asked:
"Is it acceptable to build projects with stolen property? What sort of results would that lead to? Can be build an ethical system based upon unethical behavior (such as violations of Intellectual Property Rights)? "
So now it seems those who brushed us aside could themselves be brushed aside by those who we'd warned about who see the means to profit from social purpose rather than to deploy profit for social purpose. Our purpose, was those considered of no social value, disposable as described in 'Death Camps, For Children and 5 years later by The Sunday Times reporting on the same facilty at Torez.
'The Ukrainian maxim: “I saw nothing, my home is on the other side of the village” has no place in the modern world. If by our deliberate blindness, children are allowed to suffer such depravities then, by our inaction, we are all guilty.'
.
I was reminded of the argument from the 1996 paper in which this 'for purpose' business model was conceived, which asks who should be considered disposable: A prescient question as it would turn out:
“This is a tricky question. Except in the case of self-defense, if for any reason we answer “Yes”, regardless of what that reason is, we are in effect agreeing with the proposition of disposing of human beings. Whether disposal be from deprivation or execution, the result is the same for the victim. If we agree that sometimes, for some reasons, it is acceptable and permissible to dispose of human beings, actively or passively, the next question is “Which people?” Of course I will never argue that one of them should be me, though perhaps it should be you. You respond in kind, it cannot be you, but maybe it should be me. Not only can it not be you, it also cannot be your spouse, your children, your mother or father, your friends, your neighbors, but, maybe someone else. Naturally I feel the same way. Maybe we come to an agreement that it shouldn’t be either you or me, or our families and friends, that can be disposed of, but perhaps someone else. While we are debating this — passionately and sincerely, no doubt — a third party comes along and without warning disposes of the both of us, or our families, or our friends. And there is the trap we have fallen into, because whether or not we approve of our or our families’ and friends’ demise is irrelevant. It is fair because we accepted the principle of human disposability. We just didn’t intend that it be us who are tossed, but if we or our families and friends die, it is in accordance with principles that we ourselves have accepted and so must live — and die — by. “
In the final analysis, the children tossed into trenches are the biggest losers.
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
(Sir Walter Scott)
The clash between non-profit purists and innovators is blocking progress of the European Commission's Social Business Intiative, warns Filippo Addarii.
Writing on the EU Social Business Initative (SBI) in an article for Civil Society. he describes the strategy of mapping social enterprise across Europe and collecting national statistics.
“This strategy doesn’t solve the fundamental problem at the core of SBI that surfaced again in the November meeting. That is the clash between the purists of non-profit who look for incremental benefits under a new tag and the innovators who see SBI as a third way between competitiveness and social inclusion policies.
The stumbling blocks are the usual ones: the role of private investments and their profitability, special protection from competition rules, privileged access to public funding, and aversion to using the transformational power of the web and new technologies for public engagement. ”
Describing lobbyists and vested interests who’ve re-invented themselves he says:
“They rebranded themselves as social innovators and entrepreneurs because these are the new tags to get the ears and funding of Brussels. The Commission ended up opening the floor to every stakeholder claiming a place at the table.”
A familiar lament for us, who'd launched in the UK 9 years ago, with a business proposal to tackle poverty. It applied our non-dividend distrbuting model re-investing at least 50% of profit in a social goal and said this:
"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”
In 2006, we'd gone head to head with vested interests challenging Ukraine's oligarchs over the plight of children abandonded due to disability or poverty, to state care. This was the 'Marshall Plan' proposal for social enterprise on a national scale in Ukraine, with vulnerable children as the primary focus.
To protect this work from vested economic interests aka "mafia", after submission to government in 2006, we'd published it in a prominent web journal the next year and in 2008, the opportunity arose to introduce it to the EU Citizens Consultation where it remained visible to all for more than 3 years.
That was before the EU Social Business Consultation which came up with some very familiar ideas. So familiar that I drew the attention of my MEP Sir Graham Watson to the possibility of plagiarism. He acknowledged the similarities and forwarded my complaint to Commissioner Michel Barnier
In 2011, I'd also made the point of introducing our work and our model to the EU social business competition in Naples with an entry for "Turning Camorra premises into a social enterprise". This would be at least a defence of our intellectual property, whether or not we were successful with our entry.
Commissioner Barnier’s response is to say that these concepts were the result of ‘high level’ discussions and that they weren’t aware of our work, which rather undermines the very point of a public consultation, business competition and indeed the point of having a democracy.
In an article on rethinking capitalism, written before his death in 2011, Terry Hallman drew attention to the problem with these words:
"Hallman concludes that social business and social enterprise must be done by working backwards, from the problem: identify the worst social conditions in any given location, then analyze why the problem(s) exist. This method will always reveal all factors and barriers. Only then can the problem be understood, and then possibly fixed. But, he notes, barriers are often found in various organizations who are supposed to be trying to fix the problem, but have vested interests in direct conflict with achieving actual solutions."
Two years earlier in a discussion on Skoll Social Edge he asked:
"Is it acceptable to build projects with stolen property? What sort of results would that lead to? Can be build an ethical system based upon unethical behavior (such as violations of Intellectual Property Rights)? "
So now it seems those who brushed us aside could themselves be brushed aside by those who we'd warned about who see the means to profit from social purpose rather than to deploy profit for social purpose. Our purpose, was those considered of no social value, disposable as described in 'Death Camps, For Children and 5 years later by The Sunday Times reporting on the same facilty at Torez.
'The Ukrainian maxim: “I saw nothing, my home is on the other side of the village” has no place in the modern world. If by our deliberate blindness, children are allowed to suffer such depravities then, by our inaction, we are all guilty.'
.
I was reminded of the argument from the 1996 paper in which this 'for purpose' business model was conceived, which asks who should be considered disposable: A prescient question as it would turn out:
“This is a tricky question. Except in the case of self-defense, if for any reason we answer “Yes”, regardless of what that reason is, we are in effect agreeing with the proposition of disposing of human beings. Whether disposal be from deprivation or execution, the result is the same for the victim. If we agree that sometimes, for some reasons, it is acceptable and permissible to dispose of human beings, actively or passively, the next question is “Which people?” Of course I will never argue that one of them should be me, though perhaps it should be you. You respond in kind, it cannot be you, but maybe it should be me. Not only can it not be you, it also cannot be your spouse, your children, your mother or father, your friends, your neighbors, but, maybe someone else. Naturally I feel the same way. Maybe we come to an agreement that it shouldn’t be either you or me, or our families and friends, that can be disposed of, but perhaps someone else. While we are debating this — passionately and sincerely, no doubt — a third party comes along and without warning disposes of the both of us, or our families, or our friends. And there is the trap we have fallen into, because whether or not we approve of our or our families’ and friends’ demise is irrelevant. It is fair because we accepted the principle of human disposability. We just didn’t intend that it be us who are tossed, but if we or our families and friends die, it is in accordance with principles that we ourselves have accepted and so must live — and die — by. “
In the final analysis, the children tossed into trenches are the biggest losers.