Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, has revealed that the only value to Facebook is shareholder value.
“The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer
but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their
astronomical profits before people,” she told lawmakers."
I think there was a big push in the business world about a half century ago to focus almost exclusively on Shareholder returns. I think this was actually a shift from the business ethos at the time of Stakeholder Value. That is, CEOs and all top management became focused on stock prices, and the way they were forced to do so was their own compensation was directly tied to stock prices - shareholder value. Oh boy! What a smart idea, have the big corporations focus primarily on the stock prices of their investors. Seems like the basic idea of capitalism, right?
Well, maybe not. There is a different paradigm for capitalism - Stakeholder Capitalism. That is, the company or corporation needs to keep four things in balance - shareholders, customers, employees, and the community (environment). If you don't balance all four things, things go way out of balance and disaster looms.
Well, disaster is not looming, disaster is happening. Facebook and Social Media have computer algorithms designed to make us hate each other and the result is an attempted coup by a losing president and his Party to overthrow the government. That story is not over, it is progressing toxically.
Focus on profit over the impact corporations have on the environment is creating a Climate Change and environmental filth that is destroying species, forests, coral, human lives and livelihoods. The fossil fuel and corporate agribusiness models are fatal.
Shareholder Capitalism is creating income inequalities and imbalances the likes of which led to the French and Russian revolution slaughters.
Some in the business world are turning to Stakeholder Capitalism with prioritizing environment, employees, and customers as well as top executive and shareholder investor income. Thank goodness for balance and flexibility in their approach.
Shareholder Capitalism screams charges of Socialism whenever governments impose regulations and taxes needed to protect the needs of environment and community, workers, and customers, but if the Shareholder Model ignores the balance the balance needs to be imposed. If not, the earth, water, and air become so toxic that we all slowly wither. And the guillotines get sharpened.
We are out of balance in so many ways. Time to restore.
