Comment by dimal
10 days ago
It's shareholder capitalism. Capitalism can be a great thing, but shareholder capitalism defines profits as the only reason for a corporation to exist. Humans are simply resources to extract work or profit from, and destroying the future of the country is an unfortunate externality. CEOs are obligated to behave like sociopaths. Lying, cheating, stealing, and subverting democracy are all good business if it returns value to shareholders. We see this over and over again, and wonder why our society is so fucked up.
And since every major corporation is behaving like this, even if a CEO wanted to give a shit about the country, they can't do anything about it because someone else will be more cutthroat than them and eat their lunch.
> Humans are simply resources
I thought that the human resources department made that obvious.
The notion of shareholder primacy capitalism is one of those ideas that seems great on paper, much like communism, but its end effects are disastrous.
It seems great cause it’s simple and gives a nice simple answer to “what’s capitalism” and “how to make effective companies”. That intellectual (existential?) laziness is costly long term however.