excerpt from Chapter 6 - flood example

Chapter 6 - page 102

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One excellent example of “Constructive Capitalism” came from Home Depot who shut all their stores in the Southwest US during the Austin, Texas floods in late 2013.  As part of their relief effort, the Home Depot shipped warehouses full of supplies and sent their staff to the flooded area to immediately start rebuilding the damaged communities.  The employees were paid in full their regular salary and all their travelling expenses.

Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (August 2005) was still a fresh memory in 2013, and no one wanted to see the same thing happening in the city of Austin, so Home Depot mobilized almost five thousand employees, delivered untold truck loads of supplies and utilized their management skills to deliver on-ground support to those affected by the floods.  Just to be clear, the Home Depot was not involved at all in the initial rescue or relief effort but rather the rebuilding efforts that followed.  Fortunately, the rescue and relief efforts were pretty well managed as opposed to Katrina, so the rebuilding process could start right away.  The Home Depot did not wait for insurance issues, local zoning discussions or the media.  They just started rebuilding and repairing people’s homes so the owners could move back in.

The effect was immediate and astounding for Home Depot.  Home Depot had forfeited a sizable portion of their marketing budget to fund this effort but certainly reaped the rewards from a business standpoint.  Their brand value sky-rocketed as did their stock price following the Austin floods.  By March of 2015, Home Depot’s stock price had almost tripled to just under $200.  When asked about their efforts at the time to make such a large commitment, the CEO said that he just could not sit back and watch people in trouble when he knew he had the resources at his finger tips to do something about it.  He pointed out that Home Depot was monstrously successful in the South Texas area and that he felt that they should contribute as much as possible.  Many share holders at the time questioned his decision as they felt that the Home Depot was going to potentially forego billions in sales as a result of the rebuilding effort and that the materials should not have been just “given-away”.  Home Depot at the time made it clear to the stock-holders, that as a part of the local business community, they had an obligation to be involved in the rebuilding of its communities whenever required.  It is not moral to profit from the suffering of its customers.  This was revolutionary corporate thinking.

Today, the Home Depot has a regular rebuilding program that goes to disaster areas all over the world and pitches in “on-ground” as required.  They are under no obligation to wait for governmental efforts other than not to interfere with rescue efforts.  

Excerpt from Chapter 4

Chapter 4 -- page 56

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One of the most horrific and misguided thoughts of the time that got embedded in the American psyche was that compassion was equal to socialism or communism.

By 2009, just the comment of a compassionate governmental policy made the speaker into, at a minimum a socialist, and in the worse case, a Hitleresque demagogue who was striving to undermine the entirety of the USA.  That may sound melodramatic, but phrases like that were actually used at the time by American citizens.  I can still remember with disgust back in 2010 when President Obama was trying to implement some type of universal health insurance program so that every American citizen would have access to health care.  The shocking thing to me is that a system, which cared about the general health of all citizens, was considered akin to Nazism by some people.  Even to this day that still strikes me as the most absurd type of rhetoric.  To me and many others, it was an unconscionable misuse of our American right to freedom of speech, and I argued at the time that it should be considered hate speech.  To utilize NAZI imagery in an American political debate is simply immoral on any level.

The Republican Party and the Tea Party Movement were mostly to blame for this rhetoric, and as early as 1980, there had come a point where political expediency was the paramount goal.  Rhetoric could be founded upon any truth or mistruth and could even be what many folks would consider slanderous.  The shocking thing about this situation is that so many American citizens actually accepted this rhetoric and supported it.  I can understand that there was disillusion in the US at the time due to the 2008 economic collapse but to sink to such lows should have been offensive to so many more people.  This is why I argued so strongly that a new definition of freedom needed to be established, as we as a nation, had sunk just too far in our willingness to allow anyone to do or say whatever they chose in the political arena.

Chapter 1: continued

January 20^th, 2013.   Henderson Francis West is inaugurated as the forty-fifth President of the United States of America.  This is still hard for me to write as it still seems so incredible to me as an individual, let alone as someone who has been characterized by others as the “greatest man alive”.  People magazine actually gave me that infamous title in 2018 much to my personal embarrassment.  A few of my more enthusiastic supporters have even characterized me as the “greatest man in the history of the world”.  Once again this is a completely incredulous depiction of me and one which is simply ridiculous.

I am of course flattered and equally appreciative of such extreme praise, but I still consider thoughts of this nature unequivocally strange.  I am, however, level-headed enough to see the origin of such claims.  For example, one achievement I will readily acknowledge that has had profound impact is my contribution to the overall health of the population of the planet.  I will admit freely and proudly that I have delivered a great deal in my time, and I am very receptive to the praise I receive in this area.  To me, my contribution in terms of world health is of the greatest significance.

Through my business successes, I have been able to provide to literally millions of people proper nutrition through the distribution of the universally recognized “NutrisHouse” brand.  The recipients have benefitted not only in receiving proper nutrition but also from receiving dignity, stability and an appropriate level of quality of life such that overall enhanced and peaceful living conditions became possible around the world.  In return, I have been fortunate to receive success and wealth far beyond what any single man should ever possess.  Most importantly to me though, through my wealth and success I had been offered a platform to exert influence and change for the betterment of society and this is truly the greatest reward in my life.

Some other people give me my greatest credit for my global contributions in terms of the numerous relief and charitable efforts that I have first-handedly developed and moved forward, not only in my own business world, but across the corporate and charitable landscape in general.  My efforts, in the humanitarian realm, have led to the expanded expectations of charitable organizations and even more influentially on corporations and how they operate.  Corporations were to become more tangibly involved and extremely influential wherever they conducted business rather than be merely fund-raisers, check writers or public relations opportunists.

From my perspective, my greatest contribution in the humanitarian area though was not so much in the area of physical, financial, medical or on-ground mobilization.  Rather, I take the greatest pride in being a catalyst for a new level of willingness to solve the world’s problems by private individuals and organizations in general.  Up until the year 2012, most people looked to government and charities to fulfill the humanitarian role.  I was able to leverage a truly caring mindset and attitude specifically of young Americans to spear-head a cultural shift where young citizens would actually go to parts of the world that required knowledge or relief efforts and give their time, education and muscle.  This mindset as it turned out was critical as well for these people in their employment as they strived to work with companies that reflected their spirit of generosity.

The result was that corporations came to realize that through legitimate on-ground humanitarian efforts locally and internationally, the value of their companies increased as their brand value increased.  The era of exploiting developing nations, leveraging humanitarian efforts for Public Relation improvement and profiteering as the world continued to decline was coming to an end.  I fortunately was able to show a new path that ultimately provided improved world standards and delivered increased corporate profits.

I feel comfortable in taking pleasure in the fact that my contribution in the humanitarian realm far exceeded the negatives and as a result, many of the world’s greatest inequities are being addressed, and a lot of them have been eradicated.  This is what I truly want my legacy to be though I know it will not.  I understand this though, as my efforts in restoring democratic values and instilling a contribution valuation mindset have had long-lasting profound effects on the world.

My greatest contribution in America was in terms of changing many of the institutions and fundamental thought processes so that we were able to move-forward in a ridiculously complicated and globalized world.  As I mentioned, in the early twenty-first century, most American institutions had become thoroughly inept at being able to even function let alone strive for effectiveness.  I figure that one can easily make the argument that I might never have even won the 2012 election, if the governmental processes were not as broken as they were at the time.  It was this extremely broken system that I completely despised that ultimately permitted me to win.  Life can be supremely ironic.