Shareholder value killing business and the planet (and its inhabitants)

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/09/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/


Rudolf Steiner envisioned a social renewal that would be comprised of a threefold social order:  social, artistic and economic. He indicated that the economic realm exists solely to support the social and artistic realms and for no other reason. The economic realm does not exist to allow a lucky elite to accumulate wealth generatead by the labor of others, which is what shareholders get.

Steiner indicated, in the early 20th century (so ahead of his time!) that shareholders would become a cancer on human culture. He said that when an initiative needs start up capital, that an investor should receive a modest return (interest) on her loan of capital but to give that investor shares in which the investor, or future owners of the stock, profit generated by the wealth of employees of the initiative amounted to a cancer on human culture.

Steiner sure looks right. Capitalism and its priority to please shareholders is killing the planet and its inhabitants, a slow, painful downfall.

In law school, everyone takes Corporations which was a two semester course at my school and, I imagine, most law schools.  Much of our legal system serves the corporate world and our legal system has becoming increasingly corporatized, prioritizing corporations over people.

My Corp law prof was a great professor. A showman and a brilliant legal analytical mind. And he was a corporate activist. He sometimes would buy one share in a company so he could go to shareholder meetings and protest corporate policies.  He began each new class by asking, in classic law school rhetorical stance, "What is the purpose of a corporation?"

Then he let the huge auditorium filled with law students bluster for awhile. I never have hung out a more argumentative crrowd than law students. How boring law school was for me and yet I was steadily amazed to see the guys down in front -- for the most aggressive guys always sat as close to the teacher as possible, so they could talk (show off?) more -- how they loved to argue just to argue, not to learn.Or so it seemed to me.

When all the biggest debaters in our corporations class had run out of gas, Scott, the perofessor, would say "The goal of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders." That unleashed another round of debate. Didn't corporations serve society?  Nope. Scott guided us to our case law books.  It is deeply woven into our legal system that corporations do not have a duty to the social or artistic realms:   corporations, in the legal mindset of our legal system, only has a duty to make money for shareholders. Corps don't even have a duty to provide good livings for its workers, who generate the wealth cancerous stakeholders end up owning.

I listened to arguments ad nauseum during my law school years justifying corporations having no duty to society, to nature, to its employees. The only duty a corporation had, we were told again and again  -- in tax classes, contracts, torts, even that peculiar Sub-S corp class I took -- that the only duty a corporation has is to make money for its shareholders.  I like to believe this attitude has softened.  I have participated in many discussions, conferences and, yes, debates about the various takeholders in a society and heard, repeatedly, the argument that as a participant in society, a corporation has duties to that society and not merely to shareholders. And corps have invested in greenwashing themselves, posiong as socially responsible.

I read the other day that capitalism is killing the earth. Fracking, extracting all the natural resources needed to make those bendable iphones and my laptops, etc.

I took a class in my OD MS program in the environmental department called "Building Sustinable Businesses". I heard lots of rhetoric about corporations have duties to community, employees, the education system that educates their employees, the society that provices a container in which they exist, market and, hopefully, thrive. But no laws.  I took that class in 1999. Corporate social responsbility was in it s infancy. Now I have seen it morph into a cynical way for corporations to greenwash themselves.

And now I see the sharing economy being akin to the greenwashing of corporate social responsibility -- paying lipservice to being socially responsible but not doing anything socially responsible other than make money for shareholders  (Walmart owners are multi-billionaires but they do not pay a living wage to most of their staff, taxpayers pay for their emplyees health care and food stamps and the Walmart owners get rich while evading their responsibility to the people who create their wealth).

AirBnB, Uber, Lyft. These companies don't seem to give a hoot about social responsibility. While I empathize with Uber or Lyft drivers, or Taskrabbit taskers, for any genuine need to generate enough income to thrive in the world, we still have shareholders in such companies gaining return on the workers' effort plus offloading lots of risk onto society. If an Uber driver doesn't have to carry the same kind of insurance as a taxi, or pay licensing fees to the city, Uber and their drivers are analogous to the Walmart billionaires benefiting when taxpayers provide their employees with Medicaid and food stamps. Everyone trying to make a buck that actually cost someone else. IMHO. Not being an economist or any kind of expert, what the heck do I know?

I see many inequities in these new 'sharing economy' businesses. AirBnB takes rental space out of the rental market and sometimes creates disruptive tourist-partying environments in residential areas.

I know nothing of what I write, eh?