3 ms·
The problem with shareholders as the ruling class of an organization is that they are prima facie incapable of having a vision, projecting it, and marshalling t
by mistercheph 3y ago
The problem with shareholders as the ruling class of an organization is that they are prima facie incapable of having a vision, projecting it, and marshalling the resources to make it a reality. Because they act as a crowd, they can only converge on their common interest, which is profit. When the shareholders have their way, a profitable venture and it's customers are min-maxed for share values until the enterprise is left a pile of rubble
- Terr_ 3y agoI sometimes wonder if future civilizations will look back on this as a kind of socio-technological inadequacy: "See, this is what people had to deal with before we invented Zlormian Goal Contracts!" This kinda-relates to other legal theories, such the rule against perpetuities [0], since it's hard to assemble a framework that can survive 50.0001% of the shareholders deciding to loot it. The closest I can think of actually involves legal-statute and tax law, where a company incorporates for an explicitly-charitable or non-profit purpose and then the government enforces that status indefinitely. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities
- fallingknife 3y agoI feel like having a CEO with a grand vision beyond profitability would be good 5% of the time and an ego driven mess / financial disaster 95% of the time.