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Welcome to BurnZero.

An exploration to find new ways of thinking.

The ecological crisis demands a radical transformation of modern lifestyles, however we are all reluctant to change. Corporations are rushing to solve the crisis, yet their primary directive, defining them as profit maximisation machines, gives them good intentions yet when profit comes against moral relativism good intentions morph into greenwashing. This has already led to the 90 companies to blame for most of climate change[1][2] and this is not likely to change anytime soon[3].

Any new future corporate promise whilst noble cannot be guaranteed because of corporate fiduciary duty. Corporations should use a series of uneditable, hierarchical Tenets as a type of ROM of the business so this cannot be edited in the future. The first Tenet is Transparency, which many people might think is the WORST thing you can do in business, as profit is seen as the lifeblood and is often made behind closed doors. However, its Burnzero's argument that in a hyper liquid sector with low barriers to entry such as purely digital middleman services such as tickets sales, online education, and cloud services the only point of differentiation is within the moral relativism space.

This opportunity seems only available to ethically unencumbered newcomers[4], as can be seen with Stripe's Climate Service vs the more traditional services like Paypal, Humanitix vs Eventbrite or even in the success of companies like Patagonia. However, only a minority of companies in each sector are forging ahead, one elephant in the room remains, the authenticity of ethical claims. This has led to the establishment of an abundance of startups flooding the space to certify each other as supremely "green" or "ethical". The prime example of which is the "B Corporation" which relative to traditional businesses has done a world of good, however these types of governance systems mask a fundamental conflict of interest within the commercial third party governance space.

For instance, if a company pays a third party to certify itself as green, what if after the payment has been taken the third party fails to certify the company under the criteria? In a market with only one certifier (such as the government in the medical sector) the company has no choice but to fold. However in an open market, where there is little to no regulation and a bevvy of certifiers a negative feedback loop is generated where the lowest price with the lowest standards means the this type of regulation, ethically is ultimately doomed.

So where to go from here? Government eco/ethical certification would be great, but that isn't going to happen as meeting the Paris Agreement requirements will require a contraction in living standards GDP. i.e. any governmental democratic power is massively reliant on lots of non-eco/ethical activity (See most recently September 8, 2022: "UK to announce dozens of new North Sea oil and gas licences"). Self, third party and governmental regulation isn't going to solve this problem. So instead of putting a plaster on the symptoms, perhaps its the machines themselves that are in error? Perhaps a new, competitive machine can be designed that avoids these issues from inception?

This is nothing new, benevolent Not For Profits (NFPs) such as GreenPeace and WWF have been operating since the 60's, however they have been extremely unsuccessful. There are many reason for this, one is their governmental status which exempts them from Income and Corporation Tax, leads them to operate in an extremely slow and conservative manner. This is because instead of fiduciary duty pushing their productivity, they work in the fear of pissing off the State and having their Tax Exemption Status revoked, which would lead to a massive reduction in income and threaten their survival. Lastly, NFPs in the absence of the persuit of profit become people and cost heavy becoming inefficient, some estimate between 30%-80% of donations to NFPs are swallowed up before they go anywhere near their destination.

The Transparent Company

The T-Corp is an experimental new type of company which intends to solves many of these issues by baking 100% transparency into the machine from the start. This is done in a number of ways:

Financially

All revenues are centrally received into a Stripe account, where they are held. The current balance and all previous transactional data is then openly published to a Decentralised Repository (burnzero.com). This gives the ethical assurance that retrospective falsification of records cannot occur as all changes are publically via its own automated Twitter account, Transparent122.

Strategically

Historically, many businesses have failed due to human error, whether this is simple miscommunication, embezzlement of funds, or general skullduggery. The Transparent Company mitigates this by only entering markets with low maintenance requirements increasing automation into a DSAO structure.

Current Progress

The primary investment in setting up the DSAO is complete and up and running (https://prepare.online/). The current rate-limiting step is the open source publication of The Transparent Company Incorporation Statement via GitHub and subsequent Australian ABN Incorporation. Once complete, this will lead to the creation of a bank account which will then lead to the Stripe account which will then lead to revenue generation which will fund the Proposal and Commission system which will help publicize this project.

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  1. If at First You Don’t Succeed: Suing Corporations for Climate Change. Geetanjali Ganguly, Joana Setzer, Veerle Heyvaert. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 38, Issue 4, Winter 2018, Pages 841–868, https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqy029. First published: 20 October 2018. Accessed on 4th October 2022 via https://academic.oup.com/ojls/article/38/4/841/5140101
  2. Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010. Richard Heede. Climatic Change volume 122, pages: 229–241 (2014). Accessed on 4th October 2022 via: https://shorturl.at/rwFMT
  3. An assessment of climate action by high-carbon global corporations. Simon Dietz, Charles Fruitiere, Carlota Garcia-Manas, William Irwin, Bruno Rauis & Rory Sullivan. Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 1072–1075 (2018). Accessed on 4th October 2022 via https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0343-2
  4. Can Corporations Have (Moral) Responsibility Regarding Climate Change Mitigation? Journal of Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 20, 2017 - Issue 3. Pages 314-332. First published online: 18th October 2017, accessed online on 4th October 2022 via https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2017.1374015

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