In this frenzied era of mass consumerism, there is a form of consumer sovereignty that is intentional. When this particular trend finally occurs within a global context, it will ignite a cultural revolution intensely focused upon advancing the highest and best interests of everyone.
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Our value proposition, for One Great Humanity, is one of expressing preferences and packaging principle. It will place great emphasis on the intentional consumerism that empowers us to vote, each and every day, through each and every transaction. We consider just how we express our preferences and how such transactional votes can be leveraged to insure that each person on earth is empowered to be the true arbiter of his or her own destiny.
One of the most important principles we embrace is deeply rooted in the authenticity of real people associating for a common purpose. Indeed, the very concept of a company stems from being in the company of others working as a corpus or body and operating in a coordinated way to build something. An authentic corporation is therefore simply a group of people associating for a common purpose and working corporately. Unfortunately, in our time, the definitions and contemporary use cases for terms such as “company” and “corporation” have strayed into the realm of sociopathy, very far from the original intent.
Inauthentic Corporations are, in essence, a shell game. The failure to differentiate between authentic corporations, in contrast to the ones that are catering to the most self-serving at the commanding heights of the global economy and politics, has severe implications that have the effect of corroding the fragile democracy underpinnings for each constitutional republic on earth.
Responsible statecraft is predicated on an understanding of these dynamics. Consider the nexus between economics and politics in the context of the competing and divergent, though somewhat similar world-views, held by three prolific writers:
- Vladamir Lenin, who lived between 1870 and 1924, was a Russian revolutionary. He held that “politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.”
- Harold Lasswell lived from 1902 to 1978, and served as President of the American Political Science Association. He believed politics is defined as who gets what, when, and how.
- David Easton lived between 1917 and 2014. He was at the forefront of the behavioralist and post-behavioralist disciplines within political science. He said that politics is about “the authoritative allocation of values for a society.”
Looking beyond today’s reactive gamesmanship to the root causes of our world’s most perplexing problems, where so much of our collective philanthropy focuses only on symptoms, we could address the actual maladies and remedies by focusing more intently on cause and effect.
Shareholder primacy is a corporate governance model which asserts that a corporation’s primary duty is to maximize profits and value for, and enhance the wealth of, its stockholders. This model not only prioritizes capitol investor interests over those of employees, customers, and society; its proponents hold that focusing on social responsibilities rather then profits violates the fiduciary duty to owners. In this context managers, as agents of the owners, have a legal duty to prioritize stockholder interests.
Shareholder primacy views the stockholders as the only group to whom a company is accountable. The negative externalities associated with such a governing philosophy include ignoring wealth inequality, pollution in variousforms, and a tendency to privatize gains while socializing expenses and losses. They also exert a corrupt influence, on what may otherwise be, high integrity democratic republics.
In the context of those democratically grounded constitutional republics that have devolved into feudalistic corporatocracies, the recent trend favoring the establishment of benefit corporations is seen as largely compensatory. Where they have been transitory, as one means to address the ills within our society, such corporations may have the ability to avoid the strictures commonly placed upon both for-profit and non-profit corporate structures.
In contrast to stockholder or shareholder primacy is enterprise governance which promotes balancing the interests of employees, customers, and communities. Employee owned enterprises are characteristically of, by, and for the people. As such, they are, by definition, the only authentic companies and corporations. Employee Owned Benefit Corporations, or EOBCs, are those that have set-aside a significant portion of the profit, the fruits of their labor, for some clearly articulated public benefit. Such a “benefit” is usually the compensatory part.
The “transitory” part is understood to mean that, were we to address the causes of our societal inequities and iniquities, we would not have to play what amounts to whack-a-mole in our well intentioned effort to relieve suffering. If we could somehow re-boot the world economy, not on a foundation of moral bankruptcy, but within a culture of benevolence, we could be more effective in our otherwise heroic efforts to address the most fundamental human needs. We could cultivate that entrepreneurial spirit, the spiritual idealism that will eventually take us from one level of attainment to the next.
Our present day problems are not insurmountable. Our insecurities, as they relate to our strivings, our sustenance, our shelter and most forms of disease we can imagine, are due to the embrace of a world view that is far more Luciferian than Jesusonian. The unmitigated selfishness of those at the commanding heights of the economy, who are trying to sustain the last gasp of political subterfuge and an outmoded economy, has the potential to kill this planet and everyone on it.
With all due respect to Easton, Lasswell, and Lenin, their descriptions of an interplay between economics and politics provide no strategic vision for our time. Our world is highly productive. So productive in fact that there is no excuse for lackluster executives and politicians to push the conventional narrative upon a world of misery.
Those inauthentic corporations, that unjustly enrich their investors and managers are, at times, public charges by proxy. They often privatize gains while socializing expenses and losses. They pay poverty wages to full-time employees while making no meaningful contribution to the public treasury. This meets the classic definition of parasitic behavior. Such a modus-operandi should be seen as such, first and foremost. To effectively convert or sunset these so-called companies while transitioning to, or raising a new 21st Century enterprise architecture, can help to cure the ills of our otherwise abundant world.
Authentic companies represent authentic democracy at the component level. Intentional consumerism will play a key role in transitioning the most self-serving corporations into benevolent ones, that are employee owned, with a clearly defined public purpose. Questions about just how these simple choices become powerful votes, transmute into volitional horsepower, and how they will factor in to help convert inauthentic democracies into more authentic ones, are put forth, probed, and prodded through our Intentional Consumerism, EOBC 1st, and Union Frameworks initiatives.
Although our deep dive into these topics is available through a trio of web logs, please keep in mind that there is one overarching goal for this series of presentations. And that is to advance a science — the domain of facts, a philosophy — the domain of meanings, and a religion — the domain of values, that are each commensurate with the intellectual, societal, and spiritual development of a great humanity.