Doing business

Thành put his wife's divorce petition back on the desk and stepped out onto the balcony to look at the lonely sky. When they fell in love, Thành had hoped for a great deal. He thought he had found the other half of his life, and that they would walk together to the end of it with many beautiful dreams. But Thành never imagined that their dreams would grow further and further apart. Now his wife had left the divorce petition for him to sign, and had taken their child and her personal luggage and gone off somewhere.
A few days earlier the couple had quarrelled a great deal over the upcoming project. She was adamant that Thành should not push ahead with it, because the assistants had analysed the figures carefully and concluded that the project would make very little profit, or none at all. Thành gently tried to persuade her, explaining his intentions, but however much he said, his wife did not agree. Today her uncompromising answer was the divorce petition left on the desk.
The assistants had analysed the figures and concluded that the project, planting forest, harvesting timber for engineered wood and manufacturing household goods such as tables, chairs and furniture, would not be profitable, because the stages of treating waste to protect the environment, staff wages, taxes, insurance, building roads... would eat up all the profit. Business should have profit as its main aim; without profit, why do business? Thành's wife supported pulling out. Thành was in favour of going ahead.
The reasons Thành gave led people to judge him as someone living in the realm of the immortals. This is what he said.
"I don't set the purpose of my business as seeking profit (at this sentence many people fell off their chairs). The purposes of my business are these. First, to create jobs for many people. When one person has a job, that person's family has the means to live. When many people have jobs, many families have the means to live. The success of a businessperson is precisely helping many families have the means to live. Second, when we produce, we inevitably create waste that harms the environment (waste includes dust, wastewater, rubbish, exhaust gases, sludge, noise...). So we have a duty to treat that waste thoroughly and clean the environment again, and that is human ethics. Only an unethical person would leave the environment devastated and polluted. Third, paying tax is the happiness of a citizen contributing to building and defending the homeland. Without tax money, where would the government get a budget to run the country?
Profit is the last purpose. Our success lies in those first three: creating jobs, protecting the environment and paying tax in full. After that, we enjoy whatever profit there is. Not making a loss is already precious. It is enough if all of us are able to live, to work and to contribute. Profit is only the benefit of a few shareholders and not very important. I'm like you: I only need a few meals a day, a few sets of clothes and to support my wife and child. Why would I need a big profit to accumulate private wealth for myself...."
Thành said a great deal about ethics, and many people were taken aback and found it strange.
That evening, the couple argued until nearly dawn. Thành's wife did not go to work at the company, and then at home packed up and left, leaving the divorce petition on the desk. She said she would not accept a business without profit. She said business must be done so that wealth grows every day.
Thành looked at his wife as at a stranger. When they first fell in love, she was gentle and admired Thành because in him she found a noble, altruistic, kind ideal of living. But now that gentle, intelligent, empathetic girl had vanished, and in her place stood an ambitious businesswoman who always wanted to climb into the top 5 or top 10 of Vietnamese businesspeople. Though living together, they had gone in opposite directions. Thành, weary, wanted nothing to eat or drink; he went to change into light clothes and drove to Uncle Hải's retreat for quietening the mind. 🌵

Very many businesses put protecting the environment last. Profit first. The lives of their workers are also regarded as of little importance. Profit first, everything else later. Every đồng saved by slipping out of tax is an extra đồng of profit. Profit first, love of country later.
Few people think that being a businessperson means carrying on one's shoulders a noble mission of heaven and earth. A businessperson is one who does business, who creates an enterprise, who hires staff so that they have jobs. Many people gather around a businessperson in order to live and work. Businesspeople appear like pillars scattered throughout society.

But for most businesspeople the motive is profit. For the sake of profit, businesspeople work themselves to the bone day and night, and that has brought a certain effectiveness to the enterprise. For the sake of profit, that is, their own personal benefit, businesspeople have a very high sense of responsibility towards the enterprise. Now, if because of protecting the environment and paying tax in full, profit is no longer significant, businesspeople will no longer do business. Many people will have to part ways and look for other work.
Only when businesspeople think differently, doing business to create jobs, doing business to pay tax and help the nation, doing business with responsibility for protecting the ecology, will such people stand among the TOP businesspeople of a different kind. They will not be in the TOP by the value of their assets, but in the TOP by the ethical value of a businessperson. They are silent heroic businesspeople who give their hearts, minds and sweat to be a support for many other lives who rely on them and live together.