Academics concerned about Capitalism

Some months ago I found the "Chronicle of Higher Education" which has many interesting articles on a variety of academic subjects, most of which, unfortunately, I don't have a subscription to read.

However, one popped up today which is open for everyone to read . . . "Capitalism's Dismal Future" . . . and which brings up some historical issues related to our current economic crisis, describing them better than I could have written. As often happens with many of the articles and blogs I follow, the comments from readers are as interesting as, and sometimes better than the articles themselves. Scroll down and spend the time to go through them.

I've been thinking more and more about how capitalism is defined by the quest for profits and the pursuit of that quest alone is becoming detrimental to the continuation of civilization. While a capitalist society, with its ability to accumulate resources and focus them for maximum productivity can clearly accomplish things no other form of society is able to, I believe the single minded focus on maximizing profits is distorting capitalism into something very bad.

Fortunately, many people have been spending time on exactly this subject for many years and some experimental systems are being created in an effort to both save capitalism and civilization. One of those is "Benefit Corporations" (B-Corps). B-Corps expand the goals of the corporation to focus on things beyond just profits alone. As their website states...

The B Corporation legal framework bakes your values into the DNA of the company so they can better survive new management, new investors or even new ownership.

Objective: Expand the responsibilities of the corporation to include consideration of the interests of employees, consumers, the community, and the environment.

• Give legal permission and protection to officers and directors to consider all stakeholders, not just shareholders

• Create additional rights for shareholders to hold directors and officers accountable to these interests

• Limit these expanded rights to shareholders exclusively -- non-shareholders are explicitly not empowered with a new right of action.

Clearly, not every corporation or every investor has an interest in anything other than profits. But for those of us who do, B-Corps may be a good start toward saving our civilization. Were B-Corps to ever become the majority of corporations, or if the largest corporations in the world were to become B-Corps (imagine what Walmart would look like if operating with equal interest in profits, employees, consumers, the community and the environment), we might be able to save both capitalism and civilization.

Of course the burden to follow the dictates of the B-Corp would then all flow down to vocal shareholders. But at least they would have a legal leg to stand upon should they need it.

In the belly of the beast

I got on the new (only 40k miles) truck of Robert Moser in Salt Lake City on Feb 26th and we headed up to southeastern Washington with a load of frozen food for delivery to a giant Walmart distribution facility in the middle of nowhere.

Robert had a baseball scholarship to college, pitched a season with a team in the minors, but then had a motorcycle accident that stopped his big league ambitions.
Robert's claim to fame is that he was responsible for delaying by four months, the release of the movie "City Slickers II". Apparently his manager at Skywalker Sound told him to erase the wrong audio tapes. As a result of that accident he was blacklisted in Hollywood in his early twenties. He ended up spending the next decade or so working at a Frito Lay factory in southwestern Washington running the machines that made Bugles, Fritos, and other corn based snacks (his area of expertise).
His previous apprentice drivers included a guy who needed to be told to take showers, and an alcoholic ex-gang member from East LA who was trying to secretly drink tall-boys while in the sleeper. Less than an hour out of Salt Lake he said "thank God you know how to drive. Looks like I'll finally be able to get some sleep." And sleep he did - through blizzards, weigh stations, truck stops, and thousands of miles. And fortunately for me, he too was a very good driver so I also got plenty of sleep.

From eastern Washington we headed over the mountains (which allowed me a short visit with my sister in Cle Elum during a snowstorm) to the Tacoma area for a quick drop and pickup, then back to eastern Washington where we picked up 40 thousand pounds of apples and pears for delivery to another Walmart distribution center in eastern Pennsylvania.

These forklift guys drive around like little bugs. I was laughing my head off and they gave me a bag of the best, freshest apples I've ever had.

A day and 1500 miles later we swapped trailers and got a different delivery to Binghampton NY. Then to Rochester, then Laredo Texas after spending 24 hours in Memphis (where I spent a few hours with an old friend), toured Beale street

- the tourist-oriented center of Blues in the city (next time I'll find out where the locals play the Blues) and walked six miles over the Mississippi at two in the morning to get back to the truck parked in an Arkansas Flying-J.

In Laredo we picked up a load for delivery to Denver but while up in the panhandle got swapped out for a load going back to Laredo.

Yesterday I left Robert who needed to get back to California and caught a ride with a father/son driving team, Buddy and Taylor, originally from Georgia.

I'm now sitting in an England facility near Chicago waiting and hoping for a ride to New Hampshire so I can convert my new but temporary Utah commercial driver license which will expire on the fifteenth.

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