The right of a business to exist and follow its own path

Take a look at http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/divestment-debate

The scariest part of this article is not the validation of organizations bent on controlling larger parts of society through eco-scare tactics, but the philosophical base on which their ideas rest, as exemplified by the statement "their social license to continue business as usual" by President Stephen Mulkey of Unity College, Vermont.

Businesses are nothing more than individuals who have organized their productive activities into a particular structure.  In the case of the ones referred to by Mulkey, they are businesses successful enough, that provide enough added value to their fellow human beings that they are able to list their shares on a stock exchange. Most businesses never achieve that level of distinguished value creation and remain privately held throughout their existence.

Businesses, whether small or large, private or public, are always owned by individual human beings and so the rights of a business are nothing more or less than individual human rights being expressed in more complex ways. Morally, businesses right to exist is derived directly from the human rights to life, liberty and property. Just as individuals are morally right to pursue their own happiness and goals in life, so are businesses right, and have the right, to pursue their goals - so long as they do not initiate physical force against others.  Morally, there is no such thing as "a social license to continue business as usual" and to make such a statement is to imply that individuals right to exist depends on a social license.  This idea is the foundation of all the most monstrous regimes seen in human history, recently in Russia, China, Germany and North Korea. It is the idea that man must live for the sake of others (the morality of altruism) that must be purged if society is to survive, and it is the individual rights of the individual as identified by America's founding fathers, life, liberty and property, that must be upheld if society is to thrive.