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I have a better idea: let's combat the notion that putting shareholder value ahead of the common good is moral.
by throwawayoldie 1y ago
I have a better idea: let's combat the notion that putting shareholder value ahead of the common good is moral.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoGreat! You've convinced nobody of anything. Businesses are powerful tools for the common good and the fact they produce returns for investors is absolutely critical to their continued existence and long-term viability. But the point for businesses to exist at all is to produce positive externalities and they need to produce those externalities for more than just their owners. It cannot be "either/or" and it's not immoral to pursue profits.
- egypturnash 1y agoYou can explicitly build the business to say "delivering shareholder value is not our highest goal, we must remember that we live in a society and upon a planet". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
- monkaiju 1y agoTheir purpose is absolutely not "to produce positive externalities" (whatever that even means). What makes you say that? You can, and people do, run a business doing all sorts of heinous things
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoYou should read a history book about why corporations were invented and allowed to exist.
- moefh 1y agoThere's an old saying: The purpose of a system is what it does[1]. You can't (well, shouldn't) judge something by its intended purpose if what it ends up doing goes against it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoAnd businesses as a whole produce positive externalities, as intended, which is why we continue to allow them to exist.
- crawfordcomeaux 1y agoOnly when accounting is done without calculating ecological cost, including human quality of life.
- Nasrudith 1y agoHuman quality of life tends to be pretty shit without them though, and that is ignoring all of the competitively a necessity "choices" where not doing so is literally suicidal. Not adopting early agriculture and settling down leads to nomadic hunter gatherers being outnumbered and genocided by sedentary farmers sorts of necessity. Refusing to mine and pollute means bad things happen to you when you encounter metallic armed and armored foes.
- asdf6969 1y ago> we continue to allow them to exist Who is “we”? I can’t do anything about it. No more than peasants “allow” the king to exist..
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoSure you can. You can vote to get rid of corporations, and you'll get outvoted. Ergo: we. You don't understand how kings work if you think it's equivalent to your situation in a western democracy.
- asdf6969 1y ago[flagged]
- 1y ago
- throwawayoldie 1y agoYes, I've heard the party line too. The difference is, I realized it was horseshit.
- wat10000 1y agoIt’s pretty rare for businesses to produce positive externalities. Businesses create value and some of that value goes to others, but that normally happens through explicit transactions.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago>But the point for businesses to exist at all is to produce positive externalities and they need to produce those externalities for more than just their owners. I see little evidence that this is true. If anything, modern VC companies are "externality parasites". They produce positive externalities for some (ie. shareholders), by putting a lot of negative externalities on society as a whole (see for example the cost to democracy, societal cohesion, etc. that comes for Facebook and the like).
- kelseyfrog 1y agoIf I had to choose between common good and shareholder value all else being equal, I'd choose common good every time. We should be suspicious of games that favor shareholder value over common good and repair them. Of course this is harder than it sounds, but letting the person with the most money in a Monopoly game also set the rules is absurd and and obviously wrong. Wrong even without having a consensus reality on what "common good" entails and this is important. The "capital game" should serve us, rather than us serving it. A fatalistic lack of imagination is no longer an option. When we're more afraid of unintended consequences than accepting that we have a responsibility to the current consequences, our current consequences look rather intended.
- wonderwonder 1y agoI hear you but disagree. Who decides what the common good is? You end up with companies moralizing, forcing employees to adhere to those common goods in both their work and personal lives. Forcing people to get the vaccine was for the common good. DEI was common good and that in turn led to Trump being elected. The pendulum swings. At least with share holder value, you know where you stand. The common good is a constantly changing thing determined by the moral authority in charge at a moment in time.
- crawfordcomeaux 1y agoCommon good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of them.
- aianus 1y agoOne of humans' needs is for status which is by definition zero sum. Same with mating. If anything those two are probably the most important needs so it's not possible to build such a system.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
- jbs789 1y agoIt’s a question of time horizon.
- throwawayoldie 1y ago...go on.
- klik99 1y agoI wish it were that simple, I think capitalism works best when personal self-interested incentives are aligned with what creates common good - IE policy is like game design where you design the rules in a way that provides an overall good outcome. In this lens, there is a huge problem with PE right now (the rules incentivize buying out industries and gutting them), and something wrong with VC (the rules incentivize enshittification) so the rules need to be adjusted to align with the broader outcomes we want.
- badpun 1y agoWould you put your money into a business which put common good above your return on investment?
- or_am_i 1y agoWould you give to charity? You are pointing at the heart of the prisoner's dilemma endlessly recreated by the very existence of capital: why choose long-term public benefit over a short-term personal gain?
- badpun 1y agoPeople give to charity what they don't need. If all businesses are expected to be charities, they cease to be profitable and thus cease to function, as no one will bankroll the initial investment required to set up a business without the prospect of making money on it. Let's look at an example. In order to produce e.g. wind turbines, a large factory is needed, full of expensive machines. Let's assume that the buldings plus the machines all costs $500 million altogether. Where would that $500m come from, if the factory will never be profitable, so entities with money will never bankroll it? The only alternative I can think of is 100% socialism and centrally managed economy, where all businesses are owned and bankrolled by the state. However, in practice all such implementations so far (over probably at least a dozen different countries) has been terribly inefficient and corrupt.
- carlosjobim 1y agoThen don't make a company with shares. This is like complaining in a tennis court that it's better to play football. Anybody who makes his business a company with shares will be beholden to shareholders, even if he's the only shareholder. There are plenty of venues for any activity, which isn't structured in this way. 1. Nobody forces you to use a smart phone. 2. Nobody forces you to have social media or use it. 3. Nobody forces you to watch Netflix. We all choose what we do in life.
- wat10000 1y ago#1 is rapidly approaching the practicality of “nobody forces you to have money.” Technically true but deeply impractical. #2 is heading that way. Lots of official info is only available on social media. Travel to certain countries can be difficult if you don’t have any social media presence as they’ll decide you’re trying to hide something.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago1 and 2 are simply false
- trollbridge 1y ago#1, I’m forced to file taxes and use 2FA to log in to do so. #2, I have to use SM for marketing. To avoid these I’d need to basically be a homeless vagrant.
- carlosjobim 1y agoThere are billions of people in the world who don't need to market on social media to survive. Are you genetically different from them?
- pstuart 1y agoThe only way to make that happen is to have that common good be priced into the shareholder value, i.e., removing externalities that allow the privatization of profit and the public subsidies of the remediation of the damage done. Easy peasy, no?
- geodel 1y agoEven better idea is not to have shareholders. After all there are millions of business running without external shareholders.
- trollbridge 1y agoOr to remove limited liability from shareholders.