Corporate do-gooders:In Venezuela, companies get the message to give back

[Judi Lynn]

Aug. 16, 2006, 11:42PM
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Corporate do-gooders
In Venezuela, companies get the message to give back


By JENS ERIK GOULD
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

CARRIZAL, VENEZUELA — Inveval hasn't produced an oil-field valve in more than three years.

But Antonio Galvis is thrilled with the valve company's socialist-style makeover that is helping him learn how to read and write while it gears up to go back into production. The 69-year-old machinist, who had toiled for 27 years in the factory, has nothing but scorn for past management.

"The only thing they wanted was to exploit us," said Galvis, who was shaping up old plant equipment. "The company's improved now because we don't have anyone to give us lashes on our backs."

The transformation at Inveval is part of a sweeping initiative by the Venezuelan government to promote local oil service companies, and to encourage them to become cooperatives that devote more resources to social development.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4122691.html

[Vidar]

1. I hope it works.

[Peace Patriot]

2. The Venezuelans are much smarter, and wiser, than I would be.

I'm so pissed off I want to dismantle Chevron, Exxon-Mobile, Bechtel, Halliburton and a number of other bad actors and seize their assets for the common good. They have no right to exist. We, the sovereign people of the United States, are the only ones with rights. The Venezuelans are just requiring them to partner with local companies and worker cooperatives, and/or provide schools, literacy and other training, wheelchairs to the elderly, or other good works, as the price of doing business in Venezuela. The article almost makes you weep, the terms of the discussion are so human. How often do you read discussions of the social responsibilities of big business in our war profiteering corporate news monopoly press? The Venezuelans and the Chavez government are gently, wisely, modestly, quietly, carefully, lawfully re-introducing business to its original positive purposes: the good of humanity through skills, creativity, healthy trade and adventure, the cross-pollination of human cultures, and general prosperity.

How do you change something that has turned so bad and sour--business becoming global corporate predation and war--back into something useful to humanity, without having to go through a bloody revolution to do it, or paroxysms of political fighting, dislocation and change?

You do it like the Venezuelans are doing it--democratically, by means of the will of the people--which always--ALWAYS!--produces the best decisions, if it is allowed to work properly. The Venezuelans are taking an evil (or what has become an evil)--oil--and transforming it into an agent of social progress. You want to profit from it? You have got to share!

This is so much better for everybody--including all the business people involved. Every human soul--aside from the few irredeemably twisted ones--wants to be pulled higher, wants to do good, wants to see more to life than profit and exploitation. This article describes business people struggling with the concept--how to comply with the requirement of doing social good? They grumble about it one moment, and the next try to figure out how it could work. Imagine if the California Indians had been able to place some social requirements on the '49ers who were lured by gold? It's amusing to think of. It's not at all amusing what actually happened (30,000 Indians slaughtered), but what if the California Indians had had some political clout? The wise would have seen that these greedbags could not be stopped. What to require of them for the common good? What should be the tax on taking the gold?

That's what I see in Venezuela. The poor, the indigenous, the vast majority, finally have the political clout to achieve BALANCE in how resources are used. It is a remarkable development. And what they are doing with that power is superior to any radical leftist solutions of the past, which were stuck in a mode of REACTION--and sometimes violent reaction--to the excesses of capitalism. The reaction to that reaction then creates even more problems for common people (torture, oppression, being 'disappeared'). Far better to quietly go about achieving TRANSPARENT elections, and democratic consensus, and then carefully pressuring the wild, lawless greedbags toward fairness.