Amazon and the Quintuple Bottom Line

The Triple Bottom Line encourages to the cost of doing business. The Quintuple Bottom Line adds Ethics and Equity to Profit, People, Planet. In theory, this is an improvement on the triple bottom line. In reality it depends on how people interpret and apply it. Even if Amazon ticks all these bottom lines, is it a company that supports eco-social sustainability?

Traditionally, capitalism focused on maximizing profit by any means. Reducing costs without accounting for the impact on society and on the environment is a fairly recent demand. 

I originally thought that the Quintuple Bottom Line must have arisen in socialist Europe. I was wrong. It is stakeholder capitalism, born in the USA. I imagine that if applied as designed, stakeholder capitalism will create islands of inclusive prosperity, with employees becoming co-capitalists.

As a capitalist model it might be an improvement on raw, animalistic capitalism. However, is it a truly sustainable improvement? What is driving this type of initiative appears to be creating loopholes that protect company profits. Certainly companies are gearing up to diminish costs associated with environmental and social taxes of one kind or another.

While all this might benefit corporate employees and their immediate environment, it could also increase the numbers of the homeless and unprotected unemployed. However, this potential disempowerment of these modern outcasts is not the responsibility of business, large or small. It is the responsibility of governments. And of oversight bodies.

And ultimately, it is the responsibility of ordinary citizens to ensure that everyone, including the marginalized poor, is treated as a stakeholder in all spheres of political and economic life.

A Quintuple Bottom Line in South Africa?

South Africans excel in many areas of innovation, including policy. Latching on to a Quintuple Bottom Line might be just up our street… Yet is it African? Is it applicable in non-liberal South Africa? Does this even matter? For given the high levels of outsider interference, whether by individuals with sophisticated criminal minds and contacts, or companies with huge financial clout or states with expansionist ambitions, it might just become another distraction.

Policy hoarding won’t improve our collective lot. It might create additional sources of employment for a few locals, particularly in the legal and accounting fields. And perhaps increase the demand for lobbyists. Which is good as far as job creation within this sector goes…

Yet for populations fed up with lockdowns, and especially its aftermath, it is community building that is required. Thankfully this is happening. Sometimes disruptively. Often illegally and violently. And far too often with hidden agendas that serve different factions within the political-business elites. Leaving oversight to civil society organisations – formal and informal.

This is not the ideal, for NGOs and NPOs are not elected bodies. And some have agendas that work within specific ideological frameworks that mightn’t serve indigenous people and cultures.

However, without them we would be far worse off…After all, corruption reality groans for a growth in the direction of responsive and responsible citizenship… And the Quintuple Bottom Line might give local communities more clout where new foreign businesses wish to establish themselves.

The Quadruple Bottom Line

Before I read about the Quintuple Bottom Line, I came across the Quadruple Bottom Line. I was intrigued that there are people who would have companies add PURPOSE as a measurable outcome. I was taken aback for working purposefully is part of my ideological framework. Yet who on earth would dream up adding ‘faith’ to a company’s financial accounting system? It is impossible to measure what is essentially ineffable. I baulked at the idea of measuring the spiritual integrity of a business.

Perhaps it was the use of the word PURPOSE’ and  ‘faith’ rather than ‘ethics’ that lit a red light for me. Whose ‘purpose’ would drive the business ethics measured? What ideological assumptions lie behind such a tactic? What are the long-term implications of this?

The Noahide Code

And then I remembered the Noahide Code. Yet even here this code may not be imposed. Only willingly embraced. In a secular world that protects the rights of all, the Quintuple Bottom Line is more in sync with business speak: Profit, People, Planet, Ethics, Equity. It may be more in sync with the Noahide Code as well – yet it would be best to consult with a qualified rabbi to work that out…

As a marketing ploy, the Quintuple Bottom Line makes capitalism palatable for a more egalitarian consumer. As an accounting system that generates more taxes for governments it might help distribute wealth across the globe. Yet only if the benefits filter into truly sustainable local economies. In practice it might just become a trade off between elites. And a legal shield that makes it ever more difficult for local communities to take on big business, even in defending what in law might already be protected. 

Quintuple Bottom Line Reservations

I thus retain reservations. I recently watered a seed – one that had the greatest potential to meet another’s desire to be wealthier than they currently are. And productive. And purposeful. It was the one the ancestors of the InZuza lineage pointed out as the least harmful, at this time, to the African continent. Yet this is true only if done with humility – with the willingness to adapt or re-invent oneself and one’s business to accommodate ecological and social sustainability. Water quality, accessibility and distribution is a primary example of a limitation on economic activity. From this interaction I learnt that being sustainable requires being aware that today’s sustainable option might become tomorrow’s eco-social challenge…

Amazon and the Quintuple Bottom Line

I became aware of this again recently when Jeff Bezos’ vision was explained to me. Would using the Quintuple Bottom Line make Amazon.com a contributor to a better world? Let’s see:

Bezos has enormous profits – certainly enough to invest in space exploration as he seems to want to do. There is no doubt that Amazon ticks the Profit box. His stated goal to provide consumers with access to a diversity of products at the cheapest possible prices he looks as though he ticks the People box -on a global scale.

However, from what I have read, and heard, his employees are relatively poorly paid. Giving them equity would be a simple enough thing for him to do. And it would be in his long-term interests to do so. After all, co-capitalism is one way for such huge companies to appease their workers. And use them as a buffer against the unemployed.

His Planet box needs lots of work before it can be ticked.  However, he might think that he has a solution in his energy use. His requirements are so huge that he wants to turn part of South Africa’s west coast into a solar farm for his company’s personal use… This could be good for South Africa. Or it could be a disaster.