Our society may owe a huge debt to capitalism for our our economic successes, but it has also pushed corporations to seem evil.
People like to mention how XYZ corporation is bad because all they want to do is make more and more money. This seems like a reasonable complaint, but it is not always some greedy top dog raking in the money. Often times it's the investors.
Fiduciary Responsibility is a bit of a double edged sword. The idea, in this case, is that a corporation is beholden to its investors which gives the investors confidence in taking risk and ultimately investing in the company.
Unfortunately for progress, these investors are typically only looking to make money and watch their portfolios grow. What does this lead to? Companies bowing to the investors' demands of a greater and greater return on their investments. While it makes sense for investors to want their money to grow, it tends to lead towards risk-adverse decisions.
Companies can get in trouble for not protecting the investor's best interests to the point where they need to worry about the amount of extra profit they make each year.
If this year we make an extra $100,000 and $200,000 the next, shit really hits the fan when year three only brought in $250,000. That increase was much smaller than the year before. Something must be wrong with the company.
How dare they only make a 25% increase in profits this year? Last year they made a 100% increase. This is bullshit.
Investors don't like extra risk, and if the company takes a big risk that fails, investors become unhappy. So instead of taking strides to the future, we are forced to take baby steps.
This is assuming that the company isn't involved with the record industry which choose to keep its feet firmly planted in the ground, not even taking baby steps. Going so far as to sue their own customers so they could maintain their failing business model. Yay lawyers.
The real problem is the way a lot of corporations are funded. If a corporation owes investors and shareholders, they are more beholden to make a steady increase of profits rather than taking risks, leaping into the future.
Seriously, the investor is god mentality needs to be fixed. I admit that it would be scary not knowing what will happen with my investment if the company wasn't beholden to me, but at least the company could choose to do something risky without worrying about getting in trouble with the law because the shareholders didn't make enough profit. Then again ,I suppose I've already invested in quite a few things on crowd funding platforms that I have no idea what will actually happen with my money. Oh well. Please comment below.