Harbus

Issue date: 10/18/04 Section: Viewpoints

TR IV: I think business is licensed by society and it has to continuously do things to reaffirm its legitimacy in the eyes of society. If you look at history in the U.S. there were periods where there was not a sense of responsibility about labor, corporate transparency, or competitive markets. The whole effort to bust-up trusts in the U.S. was to ensure that we had fair pricing and that we would not have undue economic concentration or power. The antitrust movement was an example of business sometimes being forcibly told that it has to seek legitimacy in the eyes of society. I think that business has to recognize that the environment is an important issue and that business is responsible to it. I think that over the next 25-30 years many of the environmental issues that we refer to today as externalities will be increasingly incorporated into business decisions, and those decisions will have to be paid for by the consumer or absorbed by businesses. If a company were to state that it is not concerned about environmental issues, I would respond that that company is probably not being run very well.

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