#stakeholdercapitalism — Public Fediverse posts

#Economics

A fitting and compelling swansong for #ShareholderCapitalism, as well as a dismantling of #StakeholderCapitalism by #CoryDoctorow (@pluralistic .)

👉 I strongly recommend using the essay formatted, long version in сonnection with a #ScreenReader.👈

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113158693528976262

#Economics

A fitting and compelling swansong for #ShareholderCapitalism, as well as a dismantling of #StakeholderCapitalism by #CoryDoctorow (@pluralistic .)

👉 I strongly recommend using the essay formatted, long version in сonnection with a #ScreenReader.👈

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113158693528976262

#Economics

A fitting and compelling swansong for #ShareholderCapitalism, as well as a dismantling of #StakeholderCapitalism by #CoryDoctorow (@pluralistic .)

👉 I strongly recommend using the essay formatted, long version in сonnection with a #ScreenReader.👈

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113158693528976262

#Economics

A fitting and compelling swansong for #ShareholderCapitalism, as well as a dismantling of #StakeholderCapitalism by #CoryDoctorow (@pluralistic .)

👉 I strongly recommend using the essay formatted, long version in сonnection with a #ScreenReader.👈

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113158693528976262

#Economics

A fitting and compelling swansong for #ShareholderCapitalism, as well as a dismantling of #StakeholderCapitalism by #CoryDoctorow (@pluralistic .)

👉 I strongly recommend using the essay formatted, long version in сonnection with a #ScreenReader.👈

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113158693528976262

@bicmay

Our capitalist plutocrats accord myopic attention to the current day's stock price and the coming quarterly bottom line. The long term doesn't interest them because companies owe their full and directed allegiance to shareholders, even though those shareholders might cash out at any moment. So the cost of bad decisions is, you might say, an internal externality, or perhaps a temporal externality, thrust upon tomorrow's stockholders by today's, who try to cash out before prices dive.

This article is an example of that, but hardly an isolated one.

Capitalists see robustness, safety, redundancy, stability, jobs, work/life balance, equitable pay, sustainability, public health, the environment, and even human rights as superfluous concerns, mere sources of economic inefficiency to be hammered out if they seem to impinge on profit, their sole concern. Much of the conservative agenda is about this kind of sociopathy.

Switching to stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism would help. It would bring more voices into the discussion. Representation matters.

#capitalism #CashingOut #externalites #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #priorities #power #electricity #LateStageCapitilism #sustainability

Fiduciary Duty vs the Three Laws of Robotics
(why coporations are "legal sociopaths")
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/fiduciary-duty-vs-three-laws-of-robotics.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room
(overview of shareholder vs stakeholder theory)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

@bicmay

Our capitalist plutocrats accord myopic attention to the current day's stock price and the coming quarterly bottom line. The long term doesn't interest them because companies owe their full and directed allegiance to shareholders, even though those shareholders might cash out at any moment. So the cost of bad decisions is, you might say, an internal externality, or perhaps a temporal externality, thrust upon tomorrow's stockholders by today's, who try to cash out before prices dive.

This article is an example of that, but hardly an isolated one.

Capitalists see robustness, safety, redundancy, stability, jobs, work/life balance, equitable pay, sustainability, public health, the environment, and even human rights as superfluous concerns, mere sources of economic inefficiency to be hammered out if they seem to impinge on profit, their sole concern. Much of the conservative agenda is about this kind of sociopathy.

Switching to stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism would help. It would bring more voices into the discussion. Representation matters.

#capitalism #CashingOut #externalites #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #priorities #power #electricity #LateStageCapitilism #sustainability

Fiduciary Duty vs the Three Laws of Robotics
(why coporations are "legal sociopaths")
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/fiduciary-duty-vs-three-laws-of-robotics.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room
(overview of shareholder vs stakeholder theory)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

@bicmay

Our capitalist plutocrats accord myopic attention to the current day's stock price and the coming quarterly bottom line. The long term doesn't interest them because companies owe their full and directed allegiance to shareholders, even though those shareholders might cash out at any moment. So the cost of bad decisions is, you might say, an internal externality, or perhaps a temporal externality, thrust upon tomorrow's stockholders by today's, who try to cash out before prices dive.

This article is an example of that, but hardly an isolated one.

Capitalists see robustness, safety, redundancy, stability, jobs, work/life balance, equitable pay, sustainability, public health, the environment, and even human rights as superfluous concerns, mere sources of economic inefficiency to be hammered out if they seem to impinge on profit, their sole concern. Much of the conservative agenda is about this kind of sociopathy.

Switching to stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism would help. It would bring more voices into the discussion. Representation matters.

#capitalism #CashingOut #externalites #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #priorities #power #electricity #LateStageCapitilism #sustainability

Fiduciary Duty vs the Three Laws of Robotics
(why coporations are "legal sociopaths")
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/fiduciary-duty-vs-three-laws-of-robotics.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room
(overview of shareholder vs stakeholder theory)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

@bicmay

Our capitalist plutocrats accord myopic attention to the current day's stock price and the coming quarterly bottom line. The long term doesn't interest them because companies owe their full and directed allegiance to shareholders, even though those shareholders might cash out at any moment. So the cost of bad decisions is, you might say, an internal externality, or perhaps a temporal externality, thrust upon tomorrow's stockholders by today's, who try to cash out before prices dive.

This article is an example of that, but hardly an isolated one.

Capitalists see robustness, safety, redundancy, stability, jobs, work/life balance, equitable pay, sustainability, public health, the environment, and even human rights as superfluous concerns, mere sources of economic inefficiency to be hammered out if they seem to impinge on profit, their sole concern. Much of the conservative agenda is about this kind of sociopathy.

Switching to stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism would help. It would bring more voices into the discussion. Representation matters.

#capitalism #CashingOut #externalites #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #priorities #power #electricity #LateStageCapitilism #sustainability

Fiduciary Duty vs the Three Laws of Robotics
(why coporations are "legal sociopaths")
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/fiduciary-duty-vs-three-laws-of-robotics.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room
(overview of shareholder vs stakeholder theory)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

@bicmay

Our capitalist plutocrats accord myopic attention to the current day's stock price and the coming quarterly bottom line. The long term doesn't interest them because companies owe their full and directed allegiance to shareholders, even though those shareholders might cash out at any moment. So the cost of bad decisions is, you might say, an internal externality, or perhaps a temporal externality, thrust upon tomorrow's stockholders by today's, who try to cash out before prices dive.

This article is an example of that, but hardly an isolated one.

Capitalists see robustness, safety, redundancy, stability, jobs, work/life balance, equitable pay, sustainability, public health, the environment, and even human rights as superfluous concerns, mere sources of economic inefficiency to be hammered out if they seem to impinge on profit, their sole concern. Much of the conservative agenda is about this kind of sociopathy.

Switching to stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism would help. It would bring more voices into the discussion. Representation matters.

#capitalism #CashingOut #externalites #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #priorities #power #electricity #LateStageCapitilism #sustainability

Fiduciary Duty vs the Three Laws of Robotics
(why coporations are "legal sociopaths")
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/fiduciary-duty-vs-three-laws-of-robotics.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room
(overview of shareholder vs stakeholder theory)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

@twrling

Economics is a system for distributed management of societal priorities. If the economics do not favor a system that coordinates essential information about an existential threat to humanity, it's worth considering whether the priority management system itself is doing its job of helping to properly prioritize what society needs.

Seeing societies be told that we must prioritize personal enrichment of the rich, rather than survival of the species "because the budget demands it", is very troubling.

Budgets are tools. Our monetary system is a tool. It is critical to regularly ask whether tools are functioning on our behalf as a society, or whether, for example, tuning is required.

Taxes are one way we tune things. When people disapprove of taxation per se, without acknowledging that varying taxation has differential effects on the way power is distributed in our society, favoring some groups over others, they may just saying that they favor the power structure status quo, or they like the way lower taxes favors their own group.

Right now, society's power structures are favoring those who are killing the planet. Perhaps some reshaping is in order. Listening to the whining of those who are leading the charge toward the climate cliff, hearing about their fears of being disempowered, may not be our best choice.

Moving to stakeholder capitalism from shareholder capitalism is another approach.

I am not here advocating any specific action, just review of cause and effect. Something needs to be done, and that something is not passive inaction and acquiesce to negative societal outcomes for the sake of ever more decadent profit flowing to the already lavishly rich.

Further enriching the rich is sometimes tenuously justified on a theory that their wealth is proof that they have done well by society and so these people specifically should be trusted to do more. But is that in fact what's in play here?

- - - - -

Further reading:

Tax Policy and the Dewey Decimal System
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-policy-and-dewey-decimal-system.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room (on shareholder vs stakeholder capitalism)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#economics #taxation #capitalism #LateStageCapitalism #priorities #society #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #climate #collapse

@twrling

Economics is a system for distributed management of societal priorities. If the economics do not favor a system that coordinates essential information about an existential threat to humanity, it's worth considering whether the priority management system itself is doing its job of helping to properly prioritize what society needs.

Seeing societies be told that we must prioritize personal enrichment of the rich, rather than survival of the species "because the budget demands it", is very troubling.

Budgets are tools. Our monetary system is a tool. It is critical to regularly ask whether tools are functioning on our behalf as a society, or whether, for example, tuning is required.

Taxes are one way we tune things. When people disapprove of taxation per se, without acknowledging that varying taxation has differential effects on the way power is distributed in our society, favoring some groups over others, they may just saying that they favor the power structure status quo, or they like the way lower taxes favors their own group.

Right now, society's power structures are favoring those who are killing the planet. Perhaps some reshaping is in order. Listening to the whining of those who are leading the charge toward the climate cliff, hearing about their fears of being disempowered, may not be our best choice.

Moving to stakeholder capitalism from shareholder capitalism is another approach.

I am not here advocating any specific action, just review of cause and effect. Something needs to be done, and that something is not passive inaction and acquiesce to negative societal outcomes for the sake of ever more decadent profit flowing to the already lavishly rich.

Further enriching the rich is sometimes tenuously justified on a theory that their wealth is proof that they have done well by society and so these people specifically should be trusted to do more. But is that in fact what's in play here?

- - - - -

Further reading:

Tax Policy and the Dewey Decimal System
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-policy-and-dewey-decimal-system.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room (on shareholder vs stakeholder capitalism)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#economics #taxation #capitalism #LateStageCapitalism #priorities #society #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #climate #collapse

@twrling

Economics is a system for distributed management of societal priorities. If the economics do not favor a system that coordinates essential information about an existential threat to humanity, it's worth considering whether the priority management system itself is doing its job of helping to properly prioritize what society needs.

Seeing societies be told that we must prioritize personal enrichment of the rich, rather than survival of the species "because the budget demands it", is very troubling.

Budgets are tools. Our monetary system is a tool. It is critical to regularly ask whether tools are functioning on our behalf as a society, or whether, for example, tuning is required.

Taxes are one way we tune things. When people disapprove of taxation per se, without acknowledging that varying taxation has differential effects on the way power is distributed in our society, favoring some groups over others, they may just saying that they favor the power structure status quo, or they like the way lower taxes favors their own group.

Right now, society's power structures are favoring those who are killing the planet. Perhaps some reshaping is in order. Listening to the whining of those who are leading the charge toward the climate cliff, hearing about their fears of being disempowered, may not be our best choice.

Moving to stakeholder capitalism from shareholder capitalism is another approach.

I am not here advocating any specific action, just review of cause and effect. Something needs to be done, and that something is not passive inaction and acquiesce to negative societal outcomes for the sake of ever more decadent profit flowing to the already lavishly rich.

Further enriching the rich is sometimes tenuously justified on a theory that their wealth is proof that they have done well by society and so these people specifically should be trusted to do more. But is that in fact what's in play here?

- - - - -

Further reading:

Tax Policy and the Dewey Decimal System
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-policy-and-dewey-decimal-system.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room (on shareholder vs stakeholder capitalism)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#economics #taxation #capitalism #LateStageCapitalism #priorities #society #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #climate #collapse

@twrling

Economics is a system for distributed management of societal priorities. If the economics do not favor a system that coordinates essential information about an existential threat to humanity, it's worth considering whether the priority management system itself is doing its job of helping to properly prioritize what society needs.

Seeing societies be told that we must prioritize personal enrichment of the rich, rather than survival of the species "because the budget demands it", is very troubling.

Budgets are tools. Our monetary system is a tool. It is critical to regularly ask whether tools are functioning on our behalf as a society, or whether, for example, tuning is required.

Taxes are one way we tune things. When people disapprove of taxation per se, without acknowledging that varying taxation has differential effects on the way power is distributed in our society, favoring some groups over others, they may just saying that they favor the power structure status quo, or they like the way lower taxes favors their own group.

Right now, society's power structures are favoring those who are killing the planet. Perhaps some reshaping is in order. Listening to the whining of those who are leading the charge toward the climate cliff, hearing about their fears of being disempowered, may not be our best choice.

Moving to stakeholder capitalism from shareholder capitalism is another approach.

I am not here advocating any specific action, just review of cause and effect. Something needs to be done, and that something is not passive inaction and acquiesce to negative societal outcomes for the sake of ever more decadent profit flowing to the already lavishly rich.

Further enriching the rich is sometimes tenuously justified on a theory that their wealth is proof that they have done well by society and so these people specifically should be trusted to do more. But is that in fact what's in play here?

- - - - -

Further reading:

Tax Policy and the Dewey Decimal System
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-policy-and-dewey-decimal-system.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room (on shareholder vs stakeholder capitalism)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#economics #taxation #capitalism #LateStageCapitalism #priorities #society #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #climate #collapse

@twrling

Economics is a system for distributed management of societal priorities. If the economics do not favor a system that coordinates essential information about an existential threat to humanity, it's worth considering whether the priority management system itself is doing its job of helping to properly prioritize what society needs.

Seeing societies be told that we must prioritize personal enrichment of the rich, rather than survival of the species "because the budget demands it", is very troubling.

Budgets are tools. Our monetary system is a tool. It is critical to regularly ask whether tools are functioning on our behalf as a society, or whether, for example, tuning is required.

Taxes are one way we tune things. When people disapprove of taxation per se, without acknowledging that varying taxation has differential effects on the way power is distributed in our society, favoring some groups over others, they may just saying that they favor the power structure status quo, or they like the way lower taxes favors their own group.

Right now, society's power structures are favoring those who are killing the planet. Perhaps some reshaping is in order. Listening to the whining of those who are leading the charge toward the climate cliff, hearing about their fears of being disempowered, may not be our best choice.

Moving to stakeholder capitalism from shareholder capitalism is another approach.

I am not here advocating any specific action, just review of cause and effect. Something needs to be done, and that something is not passive inaction and acquiesce to negative societal outcomes for the sake of ever more decadent profit flowing to the already lavishly rich.

Further enriching the rich is sometimes tenuously justified on a theory that their wealth is proof that they have done well by society and so these people specifically should be trusted to do more. But is that in fact what's in play here?

- - - - -

Further reading:

Tax Policy and the Dewey Decimal System
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-policy-and-dewey-decimal-system.html

Losing the War in a Quiet Room (on shareholder vs stakeholder capitalism)
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#economics #taxation #capitalism #LateStageCapitalism #priorities #society #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #climate #collapse

@Snoro

Well, for one thing, if each government stubbornly insists on avoiding the application of MMT we'll be in big trouble, I think. I'm neither expert in nor a regular evangelist for MMT, but I have been gradually persuaded that its advocates are speaking sense and that monetary availability is better controllable than we're letting it be. There are thongs that must be done and done now, not later, so even if we have to print money to do them, that's what we need to do.

The REAL problem seems to me to be the fatalistic theory that markets are smarter than people and must be left to themselves, that the mythical Unseen Hand never fails. Sometimes timelines matter, and during Covid capitalism did (pardon use of technical term) crap to help. Gloves, lysol, tests, toilet paper were all in short supply because the Unseen Hand of the unfettered free market just was not interested.

Since I doubt the feasability of replacing capitalism wholesale, even as I recognize it as a key part of the problem, a change to stakeholder capitalism is essential so that corporate leaders can make decisions in the interest of entities other than The Almighty Shareholders, and be graded on such. Under stakeholder theory, entities like the general public and the environment, including a habitable climate, start to matter again.

Meanwhile, any focus on debt is a potentially very bad thing just now. Monetary availability for spending on necessary climate issues is key, to the point that they could and likely should block out all else society does for a while if the public really understood the threat. Avoiding a climate disaster needs to be humanity's key buskness just now if we don't want disaster recovery and, frankly, just plain death to be humanity's key business soon.

It is as if the people we trust to tell us what is right are comfortable with the preposterous notion that if we get debt in order but fail to prevent climate change's rapid onset, all will be well, and if we get climate under control but are left with debt, that's a disaster. That cannot be allowed to stand.

I know Mastodon readers are globally distributed, but speaking from a US-centric point of view for just a moment, since national debt here infects many conversations, I have to think the world will much more easily forgive us some debt if we stop destroying the climate than they will praise us for tightening our debt position at the expense of human civilization being laid to waste. And the choice is just that stark.

(Also, don't even get me started on "growth" as an economic metric of health. If we don't figure out a way to measure health sime other way, that alone will be the siren call leading us to foul our finite nest. We must come up with ways to measure, target and enforce sustainability and to seriously, even criminally, penalize exploitation of externalities for profit.)

#environment #capitalism #climate #NationalDebt #MMT #StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism #economy #EnvironmentalJustice #Degrowth #sustainability #debt #ClimateCollapse #ClimateCatastrophe #Extinction

@Snoro

Well, for one thing, if each government stubbornly insists on avoiding the application of MMT we'll be in big trouble, I think. I'm neither expert in nor a regular evangelist for MMT, but I have been gradually persuaded that its advocates are speaking sense and that monetary availability is better controllable than we're letting it be. There are thongs that must be done and done now, not later, so even if we have to print money to do them, that's what we need to do.

The REAL problem seems to me to be the fatalistic theory that markets are smarter than people and must be left to themselves, that the mythical Unseen Hand never fails. Sometimes timelines matter, and during Covid capitalism did (pardon use of technical term) crap to help. Gloves, lysol, tests, toilet paper were all in short supply because the Unseen Hand of the unfettered free market just was not interested.

Since I doubt the feasability of replacing capitalism wholesale, even as I recognize it as a key part of the problem, a change to stakeholder capitalism is essential so that corporate leaders can make decisions in the interest of entities other than The Almighty Shareholders, and be graded on such. Under stakeholder theory, entities like the general public and the environment, including a habitable climate, start to matter again.

Meanwhile, any focus on debt is a potentially very bad thing just now. Monetary availability for spending on necessary climate issues is key, to the point that they could and likely should block out all else society does for a while if the public really understood the threat. Avoiding a climate disaster needs to be humanity's key buskness just now if we don't want disaster recovery and, frankly, just plain death to be humanity's key business soon.

It is as if the people we trust to tell us what is right are comfortable with the preposterous notion that if we get debt in order but fail to prevent climate change's rapid onset, all will be well, and if we get climate under control but are left with debt, that's a disaster. That cannot be allowed to stand.

I know Mastodon readers are globally distributed, but speaking from a US-centric point of view for just a moment, since national debt here infects many conversations, I have to think the world will much more easily forgive us some debt if we stop destroying the climate than they will praise us for tightening our debt position at the expense of human civilization being laid to waste. And the choice is just that stark.

(Also, don't even get me started on "growth" as an economic metric of health. If we don't figure out a way to measure health sime other way, that alone will be the siren call leading us to foul our finite nest. We must come up with ways to measure, target and enforce sustainability and to seriously, even criminally, penalize exploitation of externalities for profit.)

#environment #capitalism #climate #NationalDebt #MMT #StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism #economy #EnvironmentalJustice #Degrowth #sustainability #debt #ClimateCollapse #ClimateCatastrophe #Extinction

@Snoro

Well, for one thing, if each government stubbornly insists on avoiding the application of MMT we'll be in big trouble, I think. I'm neither expert in nor a regular evangelist for MMT, but I have been gradually persuaded that its advocates are speaking sense and that monetary availability is better controllable than we're letting it be. There are thongs that must be done and done now, not later, so even if we have to print money to do them, that's what we need to do.

The REAL problem seems to me to be the fatalistic theory that markets are smarter than people and must be left to themselves, that the mythical Unseen Hand never fails. Sometimes timelines matter, and during Covid capitalism did (pardon use of technical term) crap to help. Gloves, lysol, tests, toilet paper were all in short supply because the Unseen Hand of the unfettered free market just was not interested.

Since I doubt the feasability of replacing capitalism wholesale, even as I recognize it as a key part of the problem, a change to stakeholder capitalism is essential so that corporate leaders can make decisions in the interest of entities other than The Almighty Shareholders, and be graded on such. Under stakeholder theory, entities like the general public and the environment, including a habitable climate, start to matter again.

Meanwhile, any focus on debt is a potentially very bad thing just now. Monetary availability for spending on necessary climate issues is key, to the point that they could and likely should block out all else society does for a while if the public really understood the threat. Avoiding a climate disaster needs to be humanity's key buskness just now if we don't want disaster recovery and, frankly, just plain death to be humanity's key business soon.

It is as if the people we trust to tell us what is right are comfortable with the preposterous notion that if we get debt in order but fail to prevent climate change's rapid onset, all will be well, and if we get climate under control but are left with debt, that's a disaster. That cannot be allowed to stand.

I know Mastodon readers are globally distributed, but speaking from a US-centric point of view for just a moment, since national debt here infects many conversations, I have to think the world will much more easily forgive us some debt if we stop destroying the climate than they will praise us for tightening our debt position at the expense of human civilization being laid to waste. And the choice is just that stark.

(Also, don't even get me started on "growth" as an economic metric of health. If we don't figure out a way to measure health sime other way, that alone will be the siren call leading us to foul our finite nest. We must come up with ways to measure, target and enforce sustainability and to seriously, even criminally, penalize exploitation of externalities for profit.)

#environment #capitalism #climate #NationalDebt #MMT #StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism #economy #EnvironmentalJustice #Degrowth #sustainability #debt #ClimateCollapse #ClimateCatastrophe #Extinction

@Snoro

Well, for one thing, if each government stubbornly insists on avoiding the application of MMT we'll be in big trouble, I think. I'm neither expert in nor a regular evangelist for MMT, but I have been gradually persuaded that its advocates are speaking sense and that monetary availability is better controllable than we're letting it be. There are thongs that must be done and done now, not later, so even if we have to print money to do them, that's what we need to do.

The REAL problem seems to me to be the fatalistic theory that markets are smarter than people and must be left to themselves, that the mythical Unseen Hand never fails. Sometimes timelines matter, and during Covid capitalism did (pardon use of technical term) crap to help. Gloves, lysol, tests, toilet paper were all in short supply because the Unseen Hand of the unfettered free market just was not interested.

Since I doubt the feasability of replacing capitalism wholesale, even as I recognize it as a key part of the problem, a change to stakeholder capitalism is essential so that corporate leaders can make decisions in the interest of entities other than The Almighty Shareholders, and be graded on such. Under stakeholder theory, entities like the general public and the environment, including a habitable climate, start to matter again.

Meanwhile, any focus on debt is a potentially very bad thing just now. Monetary availability for spending on necessary climate issues is key, to the point that they could and likely should block out all else society does for a while if the public really understood the threat. Avoiding a climate disaster needs to be humanity's key buskness just now if we don't want disaster recovery and, frankly, just plain death to be humanity's key business soon.

It is as if the people we trust to tell us what is right are comfortable with the preposterous notion that if we get debt in order but fail to prevent climate change's rapid onset, all will be well, and if we get climate under control but are left with debt, that's a disaster. That cannot be allowed to stand.

I know Mastodon readers are globally distributed, but speaking from a US-centric point of view for just a moment, since national debt here infects many conversations, I have to think the world will much more easily forgive us some debt if we stop destroying the climate than they will praise us for tightening our debt position at the expense of human civilization being laid to waste. And the choice is just that stark.

(Also, don't even get me started on "growth" as an economic metric of health. If we don't figure out a way to measure health sime other way, that alone will be the siren call leading us to foul our finite nest. We must come up with ways to measure, target and enforce sustainability and to seriously, even criminally, penalize exploitation of externalities for profit.)

#environment #capitalism #climate #NationalDebt #MMT #StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism #economy #EnvironmentalJustice #Degrowth #sustainability #debt #ClimateCollapse #ClimateCatastrophe #Extinction

@Snoro

Well, for one thing, if each government stubbornly insists on avoiding the application of MMT we'll be in big trouble, I think. I'm neither expert in nor a regular evangelist for MMT, but I have been gradually persuaded that its advocates are speaking sense and that monetary availability is better controllable than we're letting it be. There are thongs that must be done and done now, not later, so even if we have to print money to do them, that's what we need to do.

The REAL problem seems to me to be the fatalistic theory that markets are smarter than people and must be left to themselves, that the mythical Unseen Hand never fails. Sometimes timelines matter, and during Covid capitalism did (pardon use of technical term) crap to help. Gloves, lysol, tests, toilet paper were all in short supply because the Unseen Hand of the unfettered free market just was not interested.

Since I doubt the feasability of replacing capitalism wholesale, even as I recognize it as a key part of the problem, a change to stakeholder capitalism is essential so that corporate leaders can make decisions in the interest of entities other than The Almighty Shareholders, and be graded on such. Under stakeholder theory, entities like the general public and the environment, including a habitable climate, start to matter again.

Meanwhile, any focus on debt is a potentially very bad thing just now. Monetary availability for spending on necessary climate issues is key, to the point that they could and likely should block out all else society does for a while if the public really understood the threat. Avoiding a climate disaster needs to be humanity's key buskness just now if we don't want disaster recovery and, frankly, just plain death to be humanity's key business soon.

It is as if the people we trust to tell us what is right are comfortable with the preposterous notion that if we get debt in order but fail to prevent climate change's rapid onset, all will be well, and if we get climate under control but are left with debt, that's a disaster. That cannot be allowed to stand.

I know Mastodon readers are globally distributed, but speaking from a US-centric point of view for just a moment, since national debt here infects many conversations, I have to think the world will much more easily forgive us some debt if we stop destroying the climate than they will praise us for tightening our debt position at the expense of human civilization being laid to waste. And the choice is just that stark.

(Also, don't even get me started on "growth" as an economic metric of health. If we don't figure out a way to measure health sime other way, that alone will be the siren call leading us to foul our finite nest. We must come up with ways to measure, target and enforce sustainability and to seriously, even criminally, penalize exploitation of externalities for profit.)

#environment #capitalism #climate #NationalDebt #MMT #StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism #economy #EnvironmentalJustice #Degrowth #sustainability #debt #ClimateCollapse #ClimateCatastrophe #Extinction

@alter_kaker @breadandcircuses Regarding the metaphor of sociopathy, I'm using it because it specifically is associated with lack of conscience. I have no mental health credential, so my use is purely descriptive from a lay point of view.

I don't by using this term mean to suggest per se irrationality (an inability to reason) as might come with some actual mental disorders. We're speaking metaphorically here, and metaphors are not literal equivalences. But rather I mean the kind of reckless indifference and appearance of actual cruelty that results in a weirdly logical way if you steadfastly fail (or refuse) to consider moral questions.

This is an artifact particularly of shareholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism is better. See my essay Losing the War in a Quiet Room.
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2019/09/losing-ground-in-environment.html

#capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #LegalPersonhood #LegalPerson #LegalPeople #conscience #ethics #morality

@alter_kaker @breadandcircuses Regarding the metaphor of sociopathy, I'm using it because it specifically is associated with lack of conscience. I have no mental health credential, so my use is purely descriptive from a lay point of view.

I don't by using this term mean to suggest per se irrationality (an inability to reason) as might come with some actual mental disorders. We're speaking metaphorically here, and metaphors are not literal equivalences. But rather I mean the kind of reckless indifference and appearance of actual cruelty that results in a weirdly logical way if you steadfastly fail (or refuse) to consider moral questions.

This is an artifact particularly of shareholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism is better. See my essay Losing the War in a Quiet Room.
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2019/09/losing-ground-in-environment.html

#capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #LegalPersonhood #LegalPerson #LegalPeople #conscience #ethics #morality

@alter_kaker @breadandcircuses Regarding the metaphor of sociopathy, I'm using it because it specifically is associated with lack of conscience. I have no mental health credential, so my use is purely descriptive from a lay point of view.

I don't by using this term mean to suggest per se irrationality (an inability to reason) as might come with some actual mental disorders. We're speaking metaphorically here, and metaphors are not literal equivalences. But rather I mean the kind of reckless indifference and appearance of actual cruelty that results in a weirdly logical way if you steadfastly fail (or refuse) to consider moral questions.

This is an artifact particularly of shareholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism is better. See my essay Losing the War in a Quiet Room.
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2019/09/losing-ground-in-environment.html

#capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #LegalPersonhood #LegalPerson #LegalPeople #conscience #ethics #morality

@alter_kaker @breadandcircuses Regarding the metaphor of sociopathy, I'm using it because it specifically is associated with lack of conscience. I have no mental health credential, so my use is purely descriptive from a lay point of view.

I don't by using this term mean to suggest per se irrationality (an inability to reason) as might come with some actual mental disorders. We're speaking metaphorically here, and metaphors are not literal equivalences. But rather I mean the kind of reckless indifference and appearance of actual cruelty that results in a weirdly logical way if you steadfastly fail (or refuse) to consider moral questions.

This is an artifact particularly of shareholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism is better. See my essay Losing the War in a Quiet Room.
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2019/09/losing-ground-in-environment.html

#capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #LegalPersonhood #LegalPerson #LegalPeople #conscience #ethics #morality

@alter_kaker @breadandcircuses Regarding the metaphor of sociopathy, I'm using it because it specifically is associated with lack of conscience. I have no mental health credential, so my use is purely descriptive from a lay point of view.

I don't by using this term mean to suggest per se irrationality (an inability to reason) as might come with some actual mental disorders. We're speaking metaphorically here, and metaphors are not literal equivalences. But rather I mean the kind of reckless indifference and appearance of actual cruelty that results in a weirdly logical way if you steadfastly fail (or refuse) to consider moral questions.

This is an artifact particularly of shareholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism is better. See my essay Losing the War in a Quiet Room.
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2019/09/losing-ground-in-environment.html

#capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #LegalPersonhood #LegalPerson #LegalPeople #conscience #ethics #morality

@gwagner @FinancialTimes

Yikes. It is getting twisty.

I'm not a fan of the B-corp idea anyway bevause it accepts unfair fights. All companies should be accountable to stakeholders, including the environment, not just to shareholders. If only certain companies do this, their competitors have a market advantage so the odds of B-corp survival are poor. If it's a successful market strategy to care about the environment you don't need to be a B-corp to do it.

As I read it, a B-corp is authorization to spend, even lose, shareholder money doing good for the world and not have your stockholders sue you for breach of fiduciary duty. Indeed I'd think they should be able to sue you for not doing well by the social benefit promises you've made.

However here I see FT characterizing it as a "movement" as including "thousands of companies around the world who are certified as 'a force for good'.' This does not mesh with my understanding of their role.

Wikipefia says of B-corps that they
Include "positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals, in that the definition of "best interest of the corporation" is specified to include those impacts".

My reading of them is that they aren't, or shouldn't be,, "blessed as good" but rather that they open themselves to criticism-with-teeth if they fail to make good on their promises of good.

People differ on what ethics is, but my personal definition of ethics isn't that there is a specific set of rules you comply with. That's just law and compliance is not ethics at all in my book. Ethics, to me, is a living process of continually asking hard questions of yourself, starting with "am I today right now ethical, and what makes me sure I've not drifted?" The answer to that can never be "I was blessed at birth as ethical."

To me, any notion that B-corps are blessed as ethical or that any one agency can certify unambiguously that someone is ethical is suspect. Organizations can perform independent audits and offer opinions, but that ought not end all discussion. Anyone founding a B-corp has asked for any stakeholder to challenge them.

We should be asking hard questions of the auditors as well.

#BCorps #capitalism #corporations
#StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism
#ShareholderTheory #ShareholderCapitalism
#ethics #compliance #law #FiduciaryDuty
#environment #labor

@gwagner @FinancialTimes

Yikes. It is getting twisty.

I'm not a fan of the B-corp idea anyway bevause it accepts unfair fights. All companies should be accountable to stakeholders, including the environment, not just to shareholders. If only certain companies do this, their competitors have a market advantage so the odds of B-corp survival are poor. If it's a successful market strategy to care about the environment you don't need to be a B-corp to do it.

As I read it, a B-corp is authorization to spend, even lose, shareholder money doing good for the world and not have your stockholders sue you for breach of fiduciary duty. Indeed I'd think they should be able to sue you for not doing well by the social benefit promises you've made.

However here I see FT characterizing it as a "movement" as including "thousands of companies around the world who are certified as 'a force for good'.' This does not mesh with my understanding of their role.

Wikipefia says of B-corps that they
Include "positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals, in that the definition of "best interest of the corporation" is specified to include those impacts".

My reading of them is that they aren't, or shouldn't be,, "blessed as good" but rather that they open themselves to criticism-with-teeth if they fail to make good on their promises of good.

People differ on what ethics is, but my personal definition of ethics isn't that there is a specific set of rules you comply with. That's just law and compliance is not ethics at all in my book. Ethics, to me, is a living process of continually asking hard questions of yourself, starting with "am I today right now ethical, and what makes me sure I've not drifted?" The answer to that can never be "I was blessed at birth as ethical."

To me, any notion that B-corps are blessed as ethical or that any one agency can certify unambiguously that someone is ethical is suspect. Organizations can perform independent audits and offer opinions, but that ought not end all discussion. Anyone founding a B-corp has asked for any stakeholder to challenge them.

We should be asking hard questions of the auditors as well.

#BCorps #capitalism #corporations
#StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism
#ShareholderTheory #ShareholderCapitalism
#ethics #compliance #law #FiduciaryDuty
#environment #labor

@gwagner @FinancialTimes

Yikes. It is getting twisty.

I'm not a fan of the B-corp idea anyway bevause it accepts unfair fights. All companies should be accountable to stakeholders, including the environment, not just to shareholders. If only certain companies do this, their competitors have a market advantage so the odds of B-corp survival are poor. If it's a successful market strategy to care about the environment you don't need to be a B-corp to do it.

As I read it, a B-corp is authorization to spend, even lose, shareholder money doing good for the world and not have your stockholders sue you for breach of fiduciary duty. Indeed I'd think they should be able to sue you for not doing well by the social benefit promises you've made.

However here I see FT characterizing it as a "movement" as including "thousands of companies around the world who are certified as 'a force for good'.' This does not mesh with my understanding of their role.

Wikipefia says of B-corps that they
Include "positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals, in that the definition of "best interest of the corporation" is specified to include those impacts".

My reading of them is that they aren't, or shouldn't be,, "blessed as good" but rather that they open themselves to criticism-with-teeth if they fail to make good on their promises of good.

People differ on what ethics is, but my personal definition of ethics isn't that there is a specific set of rules you comply with. That's just law and compliance is not ethics at all in my book. Ethics, to me, is a living process of continually asking hard questions of yourself, starting with "am I today right now ethical, and what makes me sure I've not drifted?" The answer to that can never be "I was blessed at birth as ethical."

To me, any notion that B-corps are blessed as ethical or that any one agency can certify unambiguously that someone is ethical is suspect. Organizations can perform independent audits and offer opinions, but that ought not end all discussion. Anyone founding a B-corp has asked for any stakeholder to challenge them.

We should be asking hard questions of the auditors as well.

#BCorps #capitalism #corporations
#StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism
#ShareholderTheory #ShareholderCapitalism
#ethics #compliance #law #FiduciaryDuty
#environment #labor

@gwagner @FinancialTimes

Yikes. It is getting twisty.

I'm not a fan of the B-corp idea anyway bevause it accepts unfair fights. All companies should be accountable to stakeholders, including the environment, not just to shareholders. If only certain companies do this, their competitors have a market advantage so the odds of B-corp survival are poor. If it's a successful market strategy to care about the environment you don't need to be a B-corp to do it.

As I read it, a B-corp is authorization to spend, even lose, shareholder money doing good for the world and not have your stockholders sue you for breach of fiduciary duty. Indeed I'd think they should be able to sue you for not doing well by the social benefit promises you've made.

However here I see FT characterizing it as a "movement" as including "thousands of companies around the world who are certified as 'a force for good'.' This does not mesh with my understanding of their role.

Wikipefia says of B-corps that they
Include "positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals, in that the definition of "best interest of the corporation" is specified to include those impacts".

My reading of them is that they aren't, or shouldn't be,, "blessed as good" but rather that they open themselves to criticism-with-teeth if they fail to make good on their promises of good.

People differ on what ethics is, but my personal definition of ethics isn't that there is a specific set of rules you comply with. That's just law and compliance is not ethics at all in my book. Ethics, to me, is a living process of continually asking hard questions of yourself, starting with "am I today right now ethical, and what makes me sure I've not drifted?" The answer to that can never be "I was blessed at birth as ethical."

To me, any notion that B-corps are blessed as ethical or that any one agency can certify unambiguously that someone is ethical is suspect. Organizations can perform independent audits and offer opinions, but that ought not end all discussion. Anyone founding a B-corp has asked for any stakeholder to challenge them.

We should be asking hard questions of the auditors as well.

#BCorps #capitalism #corporations
#StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism
#ShareholderTheory #ShareholderCapitalism
#ethics #compliance #law #FiduciaryDuty
#environment #labor

@gwagner @FinancialTimes

Yikes. It is getting twisty.

I'm not a fan of the B-corp idea anyway bevause it accepts unfair fights. All companies should be accountable to stakeholders, including the environment, not just to shareholders. If only certain companies do this, their competitors have a market advantage so the odds of B-corp survival are poor. If it's a successful market strategy to care about the environment you don't need to be a B-corp to do it.

As I read it, a B-corp is authorization to spend, even lose, shareholder money doing good for the world and not have your stockholders sue you for breach of fiduciary duty. Indeed I'd think they should be able to sue you for not doing well by the social benefit promises you've made.

However here I see FT characterizing it as a "movement" as including "thousands of companies around the world who are certified as 'a force for good'.' This does not mesh with my understanding of their role.

Wikipefia says of B-corps that they
Include "positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals, in that the definition of "best interest of the corporation" is specified to include those impacts".

My reading of them is that they aren't, or shouldn't be,, "blessed as good" but rather that they open themselves to criticism-with-teeth if they fail to make good on their promises of good.

People differ on what ethics is, but my personal definition of ethics isn't that there is a specific set of rules you comply with. That's just law and compliance is not ethics at all in my book. Ethics, to me, is a living process of continually asking hard questions of yourself, starting with "am I today right now ethical, and what makes me sure I've not drifted?" The answer to that can never be "I was blessed at birth as ethical."

To me, any notion that B-corps are blessed as ethical or that any one agency can certify unambiguously that someone is ethical is suspect. Organizations can perform independent audits and offer opinions, but that ought not end all discussion. Anyone founding a B-corp has asked for any stakeholder to challenge them.

We should be asking hard questions of the auditors as well.

#BCorps #capitalism #corporations
#StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism
#ShareholderTheory #ShareholderCapitalism
#ethics #compliance #law #FiduciaryDuty
#environment #labor

@davidstirrup

Somewhere I recall Adam Smith making the point that if morality is to be had in capitalism, it must be encoded in law because those of means will become tyrants if just left to manipulate their power without rules. Maybe it was when he was talking about relationships of employers and employees, though really it's quite a general point. (If someone does know the quote I've been trying to find, please let me know because I often cite this observation, but from only vague memory.)

Morality is not something that would be discovered by capitalism, which is nothing more than window dressing on a gradient descent optimization engine. Any morality that is discoverable by capitalism is unnecessary because profitability will compute the same thing. But morality and profitability clearly come into conflict, and capitalism has no mechanism for recognizing that morality should win. Presently it does not.
"Fiduciary Duty vs The Three Laws of Robotics"
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/fiduciary-duty-vs-three-laws-of-robotics.html

Even a mathematical optimization engine has limitations. It tends to prefer local optima (the hillclimbing problem, for those who want to google that) and they compute nonsense solutions if you don't bound them well. The same for capitalism. The problem with capitalism as practiced now is what I refer to as reductionism, the idea you have an abstract goal and that it's OK to substitute a model even though that model only approximates the abstract goal.

So you decide that a market solution to global warming is some sort of carbon offsets or a carbon tax or both, and then you stop caring whether the planet is warming and assume (wrongly) that it is sufficiently only to care whether you're making money. Doing so usually leads to regulatory capture as the answer, leading to you getting loopholes or lax enforcement that then make you richer and sure you're solving a problem you've never actually been trying to solve.

Regulation is needed, but also meta-regulation that makes it clear that while you can establish profit goals, other measurables must matter. To that extent, I think shareholder capitalism needs to go and stakeholder capitalism needs to be part of a solution (given that it's unlikely that capitalism itself can be removed). I'm not big on -isms (capitalism, socialism, etc). If I were, it'd be hybridism (right tool for right job).
"Losing the War in a Quiet Room"
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

There's also just the issue of what we value. Right now the public conversation is always that we value growth. That is unsustainable and we need to somehow change that discussion to value sustainability. Until we recognize that sustainability is more important than growth, we're going to be investing in the wrong things. I don't have a specific writing on this, though it has involve taxing megawealth and making sure that if we're going to be a rich society, that wealth is better distributed, so maybe:
"Tax Policy and the Dewey Decimal System"
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-policy-and-dewey-decimal-system.html

It probably also involves UBI. I didn't write the following to promote UBI (or any solution), just to analyze a particular issue from the bottom up. But after-the-fact it has seemed to me to function well as a partial defense of UBI because I think people's inability to know they'll survive regardless of their life choices, and their subsequent need to scramble for a job, even a sociopathic one, just to make sure they can eat, causes a lot of problems. If people felt more secure they'd be fed and housed and all that, they could afford to make more moral decisions. Morality tends to become more practical with surplus:
"Corny Economics"
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/05/corny-economics.html

Sorry this was so long, but I hope you find something useful in those articles.

#politics #capitalism #UBI #taxation #sociopaths #sustainability #environment #socialism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #morality #economics

@Pampa
I doubt you could find a workable wholesale replacement for capitalism, at least on the necessary timescale.

But I think there are things that can usefully be done to make a dent in that space.

1. Regulate the ill effects. As long as the regulations apply uniformly, they still make for fair markets. Environmental and safety regulations, for example. But it wouldn't hurt in health care to outlaw "pooling", since each attempt to subdivide the market gives individuals worse bargaining leverage and Big Pharma more.

2. Socialize markets (i.e., convert to things like universal single payer) where fair prices are not achievable and/or where the public is better served by aggregate bargaining. Health care is an example. People cannot fairly walk away from extractive pricing if their life depends on a solution at any price. They have to take what's offered. So market pricing cannot be expected to converge on fair prices. Also, the timelines and levels of volume individual buyers have is not enough to bargain fairly, where collective bargaining would be.

3. Get rid of pressures in capitalism to only respond to shareholders. Here's a summary of why reverting to stakeholder theory instead of shareholder theory would improve things. (Bernie and Warren both had plans to do things like this in the US 2020 election. Their ideas could be used elsewhere.)

4. Get big money out of politics, so that those with large economic interest cannot purchase regulatory favor.

http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#Capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderTheory #StakeholderTheory #RegulatoryCapture #SinglePayer #EnvironmentalRegulation

@Pampa
I doubt you could find a workable wholesale replacement for capitalism, at least on the necessary timescale.

But I think there are things that can usefully be done to make a dent in that space.

1. Regulate the ill effects. As long as the regulations apply uniformly, they still make for fair markets. Environmental and safety regulations, for example. But it wouldn't hurt in health care to outlaw "pooling", since each attempt to subdivide the market gives individuals worse bargaining leverage and Big Pharma more.

2. Socialize markets (i.e., convert to things like universal single payer) where fair prices are not achievable and/or where the public is better served by aggregate bargaining. Health care is an example. People cannot fairly walk away from extractive pricing if their life depends on a solution at any price. They have to take what's offered. So market pricing cannot be expected to converge on fair prices. Also, the timelines and levels of volume individual buyers have is not enough to bargain fairly, where collective bargaining would be.

3. Get rid of pressures in capitalism to only respond to shareholders. Here's a summary of why reverting to stakeholder theory instead of shareholder theory would improve things. (Bernie and Warren both had plans to do things like this in the US 2020 election. Their ideas could be used elsewhere.)

4. Get big money out of politics, so that those with large economic interest cannot purchase regulatory favor.

http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#Capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderTheory #StakeholderTheory #RegulatoryCapture #SinglePayer #EnvironmentalRegulation

@Pampa
I doubt you could find a workable wholesale replacement for capitalism, at least on the necessary timescale.

But I think there are things that can usefully be done to make a dent in that space.

1. Regulate the ill effects. As long as the regulations apply uniformly, they still make for fair markets. Environmental and safety regulations, for example. But it wouldn't hurt in health care to outlaw "pooling", since each attempt to subdivide the market gives individuals worse bargaining leverage and Big Pharma more.

2. Socialize markets (i.e., convert to things like universal single payer) where fair prices are not achievable and/or where the public is better served by aggregate bargaining. Health care is an example. People cannot fairly walk away from extractive pricing if their life depends on a solution at any price. They have to take what's offered. So market pricing cannot be expected to converge on fair prices. Also, the timelines and levels of volume individual buyers have is not enough to bargain fairly, where collective bargaining would be.

3. Get rid of pressures in capitalism to only respond to shareholders. Here's a summary of why reverting to stakeholder theory instead of shareholder theory would improve things. (Bernie and Warren both had plans to do things like this in the US 2020 election. Their ideas could be used elsewhere.)

4. Get big money out of politics, so that those with large economic interest cannot purchase regulatory favor.

http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#Capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderTheory #StakeholderTheory #RegulatoryCapture #SinglePayer #EnvironmentalRegulation

@Pampa
I doubt you could find a workable wholesale replacement for capitalism, at least on the necessary timescale.

But I think there are things that can usefully be done to make a dent in that space.

1. Regulate the ill effects. As long as the regulations apply uniformly, they still make for fair markets. Environmental and safety regulations, for example. But it wouldn't hurt in health care to outlaw "pooling", since each attempt to subdivide the market gives individuals worse bargaining leverage and Big Pharma more.

2. Socialize markets (i.e., convert to things like universal single payer) where fair prices are not achievable and/or where the public is better served by aggregate bargaining. Health care is an example. People cannot fairly walk away from extractive pricing if their life depends on a solution at any price. They have to take what's offered. So market pricing cannot be expected to converge on fair prices. Also, the timelines and levels of volume individual buyers have is not enough to bargain fairly, where collective bargaining would be.

3. Get rid of pressures in capitalism to only respond to shareholders. Here's a summary of why reverting to stakeholder theory instead of shareholder theory would improve things. (Bernie and Warren both had plans to do things like this in the US 2020 election. Their ideas could be used elsewhere.)

4. Get big money out of politics, so that those with large economic interest cannot purchase regulatory favor.

http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#Capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderTheory #StakeholderTheory #RegulatoryCapture #SinglePayer #EnvironmentalRegulation

@Pampa
I doubt you could find a workable wholesale replacement for capitalism, at least on the necessary timescale.

But I think there are things that can usefully be done to make a dent in that space.

1. Regulate the ill effects. As long as the regulations apply uniformly, they still make for fair markets. Environmental and safety regulations, for example. But it wouldn't hurt in health care to outlaw "pooling", since each attempt to subdivide the market gives individuals worse bargaining leverage and Big Pharma more.

2. Socialize markets (i.e., convert to things like universal single payer) where fair prices are not achievable and/or where the public is better served by aggregate bargaining. Health care is an example. People cannot fairly walk away from extractive pricing if their life depends on a solution at any price. They have to take what's offered. So market pricing cannot be expected to converge on fair prices. Also, the timelines and levels of volume individual buyers have is not enough to bargain fairly, where collective bargaining would be.

3. Get rid of pressures in capitalism to only respond to shareholders. Here's a summary of why reverting to stakeholder theory instead of shareholder theory would improve things. (Bernie and Warren both had plans to do things like this in the US 2020 election. Their ideas could be used elsewhere.)

4. Get big money out of politics, so that those with large economic interest cannot purchase regulatory favor.

http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/01/losing-war-in-quiet-room.html

#Capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #StakeholderCapitalism #ShareholderTheory #StakeholderTheory #RegulatoryCapture #SinglePayer #EnvironmentalRegulation