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.