What is The Good?

Last week there was significant chatter on our Church email lists about WORLD AIDS DAY and the role that corporations play in the fight against AIDS. The conversation quickly moved to a broader discussion of whether corporations deserve credit for the good works they are doing. One longstanding member of the Church said it was important to give credit where credit is due, and defended the work of BONO and ONE at Product RED - citing the 130 million dollars donated by Product RED to the Global Fund over the last 3 years. The problem is this number come directly from Product RED and has not been verified by any other sources, in fact when pressed Product RED has refused to attribute specific amounts raised by any of the corporations involved.

The last number I can verify by an outside source is in Advertising Age in 2007 -- which claims retail participants in Product Red have invested $100 million in advertising and raised only $18 million for The Global Fund. The Global Fund reported that 50 million dollars was raised by Product Red by the end of 2007. RED is organized like a regular corporation, not a charity,  and so its books and records are not public. We have absolutely no way of knowing if anything they say is true. We do know that some of it just stinks, for example  after the initial ad campaigns Apple reduced their donations to RED from $10 to $1. Truthfully the whole RED concept really does appear to be an ad campaign, a way for corporations to capitalize on and monetize our natural generosity and good will. Here is their own explanation:

So can corporations be good? Can their involvement be positive? Yes, but the real problem is not that corporations are involved, its that they are involved outside the tax system. However generous any of these corporations appear to be on the surface one must always remember they all pay many many more millions of dollars a year to avoid their legitimate tax burden. The Global Fund is facing a $4 billion shortfall this year. The US government pays for a third of The Global Fund as it is, even though total foreign aid only accounts for 1 percent of the US budget. Imagine how generous the US could be if all its corporations actually paid taxes.

But NO! Its the job of consumers (formerly known as citizens) to pay in. And who gets the credit? Not the consumers, but the corporations who are seen as generous good guys because they let someone else art direct their commercials and say they are donating a percentage ( that they DON"T HAVE TO DISCLOSE) to The Global Fund. I am not even going to get into the other problems with RED, like the fact that even some of the RED products are not ethically sourced, never mind that the rest of the nonRED merchandise in those stores is almost certainly sweat shop manufactured. NIKE just joined RED last week, NIKE! sweatshop NIKE! sweatshop NIKE! sweatshop.

People of so called developed nations like the US have a real challenge here- how to negotiate the marketing, advertising, and institutional prowess and do right by those less fortunate - but there is absolutely NO reason to do it through companies like RED, and no reason to give RED credit for anything except having a good business model and attractive ad campaigns. I admit its all very emotional especially for those who are trying to be positive in the face of the unbearable tragedies going on all around us.


I just read an illuminating article by Raymond Baker and Eva Joly called Illicit Money, Can It Be Stopped?  in the New York Review of Books (( sorry can't type the whole thing out here and the NYRB is hard to pilfer) and I"ll leave you with some sobering numbers- they make the Global Fund and RED and all the work of all the NGO's and Governments and good people seem really futile. The vast majority of this illegally extracted money is controlled by Corporations not criminals, terrorists or corrupt leaders--thats right MULTI NATIONAL CORPORATIONS. So lets not be naive. The Multi Nationals don't get a pass, or applause, or a pat on the back and they certainly shouldn't get our money. Not so they can take credit for saving what they themselves have destroyed.

This week more about extracting resources from Africa, why aid is not seen as a solution by many, and how Bono hides his true religion.