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Thursday, June 08, 2006

Losing our responsibility

I'm often talking about PSR -Personal Social Responsibility- in the context of each of us should try to save water, recycle, help others and so on. But, actually in the last 20 years especially, we are all losing our sense of personal responsibility.

A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper puts a humerous twist on it:
-Did the credit card company force us to sign up to 6 credit cards and spend the money available on them?
-Do McDonalds force you into their restaurants to eat unhealthy food?
-Does your employer force you to not wear a safety mask?

Of course an employer should make sure their workplace is safe. Of course they can provide healthy products as well as unhealthy products. Of course they should not use advertising irresponsibly to attract you (or especially children) to smoke.

But it is almost sad when companies are providing training to their employees about sexually transmitted diseases or about traffic safety; because their employees do not know this information already (and the company does not want employees missing work from illness or injuries). Yes -there is a business case for companies to protect their employees from themselves, but why do employers have to do this?

2 Comments:

At 7:53 AM, Tim said...

I guess you're joking calling it the Guardian (!). I don't agree that either the consumer or the business can be held fully responsible - most of the time each is simply reacting to the other, and if things are getting worse, it's a vicious cycle.

On the one hand, this article says the consumers are to blame for not being responsible enough. On the other hand it says that companies should "generate wealth", from thin air, with no regard for anything else.

This seems to be saying that blind greed (for profits) on the corporation's side is to be actively encouraged, whereas the same (for McDonalds, cigarettes, whatever) on the consumer side is awful, and is the cause of all these problems.

I don't see how such an economic system, which has no concern for its citizens' health or wellbeing, can be good for anyone.

 
At 8:16 AM, Adam said...

i've changed it to telegraph after my initial typo! -ed

 

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