No. You are too credulous of economists' simple models in which firms are pure profit maximizers. Most firms are not! Small businesspeople have complicated motivations! 1/

The "shareholder value revolution" that began in the 1970 was explicitly about *turning* big corps into the "efficient" profit maximizers of economic modelers. Trying to simplify the world to match ones own limited understanding is often a mistake. It was here. 2/

Corporations can continue to exist, but we need to reverse the shareholder value revolution (under which they've been incentivized to drain cash quickly to shareholders), discipline them with more competition, recast profit as a constraint (you gotta at least break even) rather than objective. /fin

Limiting profits is what competition is supposed to do. We ought to structure industries so that they are in fact very competitive. I've written lots on this, maybe start here and see the list at the end. drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/08/13/c... 1/

We should also insist that corporations mostly absent themselves from politics. Lobbying should be much more tightly regulated, and Congressional staffs should be expanded to develop expertise in-house. 1st Amendment rights of corporations should be much more limited than for individuals. 2/

In general, conventional wisdom among firms should be that interventions in politics are dangerous. They have a role in communicating industry specific information to representatives and policymakers, but no legitimate advocacy role beyond that. 3/

They must compete in a world designed by and for the voting public and its representatives. 4/

Obviously this is all easier said than done, and long before Trump, corporate capture has been undermining our system of government. Indeed, that's largely why we got Trump! 5/

But note that in a world where corporate shareholders and executives face limited financial upside (because they've already reached the effective cap), they'd have less incentive to deploy corporate influence as rapaciously. 6/

In the pre-Reagan era, when high marginal income tax rates were still 70%, it was easier to get generous labor settlements and Bell Labses, since shareholders were only forgoing 30¢ on the dollar by spending on those things. 7/

The nature of the corporation, including just how "greedy" it is, is a function of the social arrangements that construct it and in which it is embedded. 8/

Much of our challenge is to devise social arrangements in which corporations retain (really regain) incentives to deliver goods and services efficiently, without behaving as rapacious amoral agents, in communities and in politics. Greed may be good, but only to a degree. /fin

i don’t think you can. money is power — that’s really all it is. you can’t eat it, but you can use it to get other people to surrender food to you. no matter what you do with say campaign finance law, i don’t think you can stop billionaires from influencing media, academia, etc to shape politics. 1/

that’s not to say we shouldn’t try to improve campaign finance laws. they can help at the margin. but they won’t be enough while billionaire “philanthropy” also shapes endowed chairs in, say, economics, and a thousand other levers that affect how we collectively think and understand. /fin