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Cult of Shareholder Value
Sep. 10th, 2013 12:47 pmSteve Pearlstein of the Washington Post absolutely nails a topic I've been hammering away at for years; the ongoing shift from capitalistic market based systems in the West to corporatistic financial market driven systems and the unspeakable carnage it can wreck on an unprepared democracy like the US. It's long but very much worth reading and thinking about.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/09/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/
As a Canadian, I'm generally considered to the left of Marx in American political terms, which is why every time I end up in some kind of quasi-Liberatarian debate, people are always surprised to hear that I'm a capitalist in the sense of my economic principles. I believe in the free market, in private initiative over public initiative when reasonable, and in the idea of fiscal responsibility being a key factor in stable tax rates. The difference is that I actually take time to understand the difference between a free market and laisse-faire deregulation (two entirely different things), the difference between private industry and corporate industry and the difference between stable tax rates and tax policy driven by ideaology.
Rather than go into a long rant, in a nutshell, Pearlstein does a nice job of explaining why treating the existing corporatistic system with legislative solutions designed to operate in a capitalistic system actually undermines long term growth, R&D, social mobility, investment capital and resource markets, ultimately weakening a country's economy in fundamental ways that almost trip into the level of national security.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/09/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/
As a Canadian, I'm generally considered to the left of Marx in American political terms, which is why every time I end up in some kind of quasi-Liberatarian debate, people are always surprised to hear that I'm a capitalist in the sense of my economic principles. I believe in the free market, in private initiative over public initiative when reasonable, and in the idea of fiscal responsibility being a key factor in stable tax rates. The difference is that I actually take time to understand the difference between a free market and laisse-faire deregulation (two entirely different things), the difference between private industry and corporate industry and the difference between stable tax rates and tax policy driven by ideaology.
Rather than go into a long rant, in a nutshell, Pearlstein does a nice job of explaining why treating the existing corporatistic system with legislative solutions designed to operate in a capitalistic system actually undermines long term growth, R&D, social mobility, investment capital and resource markets, ultimately weakening a country's economy in fundamental ways that almost trip into the level of national security.
