CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

“If there is one thing I have been impressed with over the last decades, it is that when the environmental community defines a number one priority, something happens. Not always something good—but something.”1
Dr. Kenneth L. Lay
Chairman, Enron Corporation,
June 1997

INTRODUCTION

Capitalism took the fall for Enron. Yet it is largely forgotten that this company had been a favorite of the environmental Left and an advocate/practitioner of the trendy notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Nonetheless, when the company collapsed in December 2001, Enron and its once-iconic chairman Ken Lay suddenly became Exhibit A against the teachings of Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and other proponents of self-interest and voluntary exchange. “The ideal of the unregulated market is flawed,” proclaimed business ethicist Marjorie Kelly in her Enron interpretation, “and it’s time we said goodbye to the invisible hand.”2 Princeton economist Paul Krugman predicted in the New York Times that the demise of Enron—an event that was bigger than 9-11 in his view—would sour society against free-market capitalism.3

Robert Kuttner took the argument a step further in BusinessWeek:

(Click to read entire essay)