"We Don't Talk Green Talk in the Company"
One of the best features ever to appear in reason, in my humble opinion, was a three-way debate about corporate social responsibility between Milton Friedman, Whole Foods founder John Mackey, and the guy you see above, Cypress Semiconductors' T.J. Rodgers. All three are libertarians, but they found plenty to disagree about. Rodgers was more Catholic than the pope, citing Friedman to Friedman, and accusing Mackey of letting Ralph Nader ghostwrite his contribution.
These days, Rodgers is also the chairman of SunPower Corp, a manufacturer of solar-power systems. But his stance on the touchy-feely side of corporate social responsibility doesn't seem to have changed:
"We don't talk green talk in the company. As a matter of fact, I get itchy when I hear that kind of stuff."
Then he tells a story about the time he caught the president of SunPower "blathering about ice caps or something like that" and went to great lengths to publicly mock him for being, essentially, a Birkenstocks-wearing dirty hippie.
Rodgers' position these days seems to be something like this: Give the people a product they want, make a profit doing it, and don't feel too high and mighty if you happen to do something "socially responsible." Green is good? Who cares? The important thing, as he puts it, is that "green is green." Like money, get it?
Watch the whole thing at reason.tv
