No Bottom without a Floor

No Bottom (Line) Without a Floor (On Which to Stand)

Dear Editor,

With all due respect, Dr. Aneel Karnani's analysis in his Wall Street Journal article of 8/23/2010, The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility, is fundamentally flawed.

It assumes that in a world without clean air, without drinkable water, without a climate that chills our bones or scorches our skin, we can feasibly continue to transact business with one another. That, as, plates shift and water levels rise, we may continue to complete our excel spreadsheets. That as energy depletes, food becomes tainted and we fall ill as a result of environmental catastrophe, we may continue to write our prospectuses, file our taxes, or create our widgets. That without preserving basic human rights of decency and dignity in performance of labor, we can have an autonomous citizenry that can buy the products and services we pack into the stream of life. That in openly selling weapons we can succeed in not creating terrorists that frustrate (among other things) our corporate purpose. That in the face of social uprisings, sexism-based suffering, and religious or ideological intolerance we may feasibly continue to conduct business, which is dependent on innovation, on the planet.

I for one, do not wish to be part of a world, country or company that looks only at its own bottom-line in the short term. No corporate bottom line can exist (for long, anyway) without a minimal human baseline that exists for all.

Respectfully submitted,

Rani P. Karnik
JD, University of Pennsylvania School of Law
BA, Barnard College of Columbia University
Los Angeles, California & New York City
August 23, 2010