misdiagnosis

Jack Goldstone:

Yet enormous and daunting as these problems are, these executives saw them as opportunities – opportunities to gain in reputation, to cultivate future customers and workers, even to save lives by supporting everything from emergency services and health care to augmenting food production and moving food and energy to where they are most needed.   Moreover, each of these outstanding executives already had projects at their companies that were addressing these problems; the real need was to scale them up, sustain them, and make them core elements of their overall corporate strategy.

All of us recognized that these problems were so large, so pervasive, and so woven into the operations of firms that government alone could not solve them; government alone does not have all the resources or the knowledge required to do the job.  Yet everyone also deplored the degree to which business and government have become at loggerheads today.   It is going to take public-private partnerships, as well as corporate initiatives, to develop solutions to these global problems that will be effective, sustainable, and efficient. The current atmosphere of mutual distrust and enmity between business and government has itself become a problem that needs to be resolved for America to move forward.   It is dreadful that the Democratic/Republican partisanship that is paralyzing our government is now paralleled by a government/business partisanship that is a drag on our economy and an obstacle to solving major social problems.

Still, I came away confident that the private sector is up to the challenges.  If these executives represent the future of private initiatives, and continue to have the backing of their boards and CEOs, America will have good reason to say “God Bless the Private Sector.”

Because public/private partnerships work so well. Because the U.S. government has been so willing to go against or without the cooperation of the "private sector." Because "Corporate Social Responsibility executives" aren't kept on the payroll essentially as a PR exercise.

Also: "Historically, America has flourished with limited government because businesses and business leaders have done much more than their European counterparts to support the communities and broader society in which they work." Which is cause, which is effect?

Cf. cynicism masquerading as a political strategy. Though I guess Goldstone isn't even trying to masquerade as anything he's not.