The central idea of my life’s work is that “the ugliness seen in the civilized human world is not human nature itself.” The idea is that there are systemic forces at work that move things in a certain direction because of the dynamics at work within the system, and not because people are intentionally making free choices. That’s it.
One of those systems is one that has generated truly destructive organizational forces, the mutual interaction that emerged when our species set foot on the path of civilization (about 10,000 years ago). It is the comprehensive system of a civilized society that functions. That unprecedented step created an unprecedented kind of disorder (anarchy) and inevitably forced human civilization to develop in the direction of maximizing power.
Another such system, whose inherent dynamics lead the human world in undesirable directions, is the corporate economy that currently exists in our society.
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Market economies, including advanced industrial capitalism, are far more benign than social systems. Whereas the latter condemns everyone to protect themselves from violence, markets work very efficiently to generate productivity and satisfy a considerable range of human needs.
Nevertheless, there are serious problems, as depicted in a previous article titled “Who kills people for money?”
In that article, I wrote that every time an industry discovers that what is enriching it is killing people, in order to protect its own short-term profits, it keeps that knowledge secret and makes many It was pointed out that the case has been actively deceiving the public. He is so driven by greed that he chooses to kill people for money.
The asbestos industry concealed the truth that the asbestos particles it exposed its workers and the communities in which they operated would prove deadly.
The tobacco industry launched a decades-long propaganda campaign to keep people from knowing that their tobacco products were killing their customers. And the worst of all is
The fossil fuel industry has known for more than 40 years that the burning of its products changes the atmosphere and could have devastating effects on the Earth’s climate, but it continues to try to keep the public in the dark. Ta.
That should be enough to set off alarm bells. The average human being is not greedy enough to kill for money (as I would argue), but every industry that has to make that choice has been proven to be driven by greed. They chose to sacrifice the lives of others for their wealth.
That begs the question. Why are these industries with giant corporations more greedy than the humans born out of their economic systems?
Part of the answer lies in the way the corporate world is evolving. In particular, this system created an almost complete separation between decision makers and “owners.”
When industrial capitalism first began in the United States, large corporations were owned and run by individual people (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc.). But the system has long since evolved into publicly traded companies, and its “owners” are essentially powerless and silent.
Capitalism presupposes the sanctity of private property, but shareholders have no meaningful control over their “wealth.” As anyone who has ever held stock in a publicly traded company knows, and as economists have shown since the 1930s, being an “owner” is actually important in corporate decision-making. are rarely given a say.
The alleged owners are silent, but the executives who actually make the decisions continually declare that they are acting in the interests of shareholders. But they always reduce the “profit” of the “owner” to get maximum return on investment.
But in reality, owners are human beings with a variety of interests. However, because this system assumes that owners are motivated solely by greed, the corporate world has entrenched greed, or corporate profit maximization, as the sole driving force of the human world.
This shows how systemic dynamics can make the human world even more fractured than the humans who live within it.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Owners may be given a voice to express the full range of their values: not only the desire for wealth, but also other values.
Whenever a company’s decisions have a significant impact on the broader world, I find that shareholders are concerned with how much they want their companies to maximize their profits, and how much they have to reduce their own profits to do so. We propose that legislation be passed to allow people to vote on whether they want to allow this. To serve the greater good. (The “greater good” – workers’ rights, public health, protecting our children and grandchildren from global environmental disasters, etc.)
“Let the Owners Decide” is a good name for this improved corporate system.
In America, “private property” has long been respected as a legitimate value. But our current situation is a betrayal of that concept. Because the powerlessness of property owners puts the system on destructive autopilot, where greed alone determines the course of society.
In a market economy, “greed is good” works up to a point. But it would be foolish to allow greed to become our absolute master.
Institutional power needs to be modified to enable all areas of our species to make better decisions than killing people for money.
Andy Schmuckler’s book, The Illusion of Choice: How the Market Economy Shapes Our Destiny, further develops the idea of letting owners decide.
Andy Schmuckler’s book, The Illusion of Choice: How the Market Economy Shapes Our Destiny, further develops the idea of letting owners decide.