Recently, I’ve been reading The Book of Life, an online philosophy textbook by The School of Life. In short, the book is about “developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture.” As they put it:

We address such issues as how to find fulfilling work, how to master the art of relationships, how to understand one’s past, how to achieve calm and how better to understand, and where necessary change, the world. You will never be cornered by dogma, but we will direct you towards a variety of ideas from the humanities – from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts – ideas that will exercise, stimulate and expand your mind.

Some of their content is stronger than other parts. But, if nothing else, it’s given me considerable food for thought.

This weekend, I read their article on “What Good Business Should Be.” It argues, among other points, that we should do good through accumulation, rather than just through dispersal:

The standard trajectory of philanthropy is: acquire a fortune by rigorous means and then disperse it to good causes. Plutocrats like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick or Andrew Mellon made money in so-called ‘low’ areas of the economy like coal mining, railways, abattoirs, and packing factories – areas where you squeeze costs as tightly as you can and are always looking to reduce benefits as much as possible. However, once the money is in the bank, these rich people wholeheartedly turn their attention to ‘higher’ causes – among which art (and all that it celebrates, like kindness, beauty and tenderness) looms especially large.

It’s not ideal to ignore the higher needs of mankind for many decades while pulling together an astonishing fortune and then, later in life, suddenly to rediscover these higher needs via an act of immense generosity towards some localised little shrine of art (an opera house or a museum). Would it not be better and truer to the values underlying many works of art, to strive throughout the course of one’s life, especially within the money-generating day-job, to make kindness, tenderness, sympathy and beauty more alive and real in the world?

Tantalisingly and tragically, the difference between beauty and ugliness, goodness and cruelty is in most enterprises a few percentage points of profit. Therefore, for the sake of just a tiny bit of surplus wealth, wealth that isn’t strictly even needed, human life is daily being degraded and sacrificed.

It would be more humane if rich business people agreed to sacrifice a little of their surplus wealth in their main area of activity and in the most vigorous period of their lives, in order to render the workplace more noble and humane – and then bothered less with dazzling displays of artistic philanthropy in their later decades?

What we’re asking for is enlightened investment where a lower return is sought on capital in the name of Kindness and Goodness. There would be less fancy art at the end of it, but the values within works of art would be far more widely spread across the earth. The true test is how much goodness is done in the process of accumulation.

In the real world, the most effective philanthropists seem to embody the accumulate-then-disperse model. Consider Bill Gates, who in his Microsoft days was a step away from Monty Burns, yet who now runs arguably the most impactful nonprofit in history. And, on the other side, companies like Tom’s. Sure, they donate a pair of shoes for each pair they sell. But I often suspect that the net result is a large marketing boost, but only a very small external positive impact. It’s good through accumulation, sure, but a rather limited good.

Still, business good by accumulation is a different thing when it permeates every aspect of operations, rather than being simply bolted on the side of each purchase. Companies whose products or services themselves actually make consumers’ lives better, while also providing a livable wage to the employees – domestically and abroad – throughout their business and supply-chain.

For that kind of good business, the real driver remains in the hands of consumers. You can buy ethically-raised, locally-sourced beef, for example, that’s far healthier than factory-farmed steaks, and supports a sustainable nearby farm business, rather than a global food-manufacturing consortium. But most of us would rather save a few dollars at the register, even if we know the cheaper beef hurts us and our world more than the pricier farm-raised option. So, as The School of Life argues, there’s real need for education, for making consumers think more about their choices. Which, at some level, is what the Book of Life is about itself.

As I said, I don’t agree with everything I’ve read thus far. But I don’t begrudge the time spent reading any of it. Consider checking it out.