Corporate Obligations

Comments

11 responses to “Corporate Obligations”

1. 

   JMPrince

   April 9, 2012

   We’ve also got the behavioral research behind this too:
   “How Investing Turns Nice People Into Psychopaths”

   http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-investing-turns-nice-people-into-psychopaths/255426/

   JMP

2. 

   Ed

   April 6, 2012

   The obligations they have beyond delivering profits for shareholders are in the dreams of liberals who want to make them both the cause and solution to all of society’s ills by turning corporations into things they are not.

3. 

   Dave Bearse

   April 5, 2012

   The conclusion then, is that you disagree that corporations are people, or you think people have no obigation to help solve America’s problems.

4. 

   JMPrince

   April 4, 2012

   Other obligations we’re failing miserably at, a continuing series:

   http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/04/the-war-against-youth/#more-77904

   “The War Against Youth
   Barry Ritholtz – April 3rd, 2012, 7:30PM
   Over at this month’s Esquire, they have a long diatribe titled The War Against Youth.

   Spread throughout the piece are these various graphics which I imagined would look better if we could assemble them into one long infographic.

   So we did — the full graphic after the jump”.–BR

   Really nice job there, and easier on the eyes than the Esquire bits. And yes, this is yet another societal wide collective failure. But it was designed and built that way too for a reason: kids don’t vote!
   JMP

5. 

   JMPrince

   April 4, 2012

   More from the prescient Michael Lind here on ‘The failures of Shareholder Capitalism’ for Salon, the New American Found has more at their site, just search under ‘corporate responsibility’:

   http://www.salon.com/2011/03/29/failure_of_shareholder_capitalism/

   “Companies exist for their workers and their communities — not just their CEOs and their investors” says Lind, author of
   “Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States”

   Lind noted even Jack Welch has renounced the idea with which he was long associated. In a March 2009 interview with the Financial Times, the former head of GE said: “Strictly speaking, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.”

   Here also from HBR.org ‘The Myth of Shareholder Capitalism’:
   http://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism/

   We are in agreement on the general amorality of the enterprise tho.

   JMP

6. 

   ire

   April 4, 2012

   They are amoral.

7. 

   JMPrince

   April 4, 2012

   Fantastic Faux like lemming response, that just happens to be ahistorical and dead wrong. Thom Hartmann for one has made a career out of pointing this out. This is one of his shortest pieces:
   http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2011/08/why-do-corporations-exist

   Search more around his site and learn more about the real history of corporations in America.

   Why were corporations invented? Historically they were limited by State statutes by both time, circumstance and region. Their charters had to be renewed yearly, but only IF they operated in the ‘public interest’. Those were the corporations of the founders time.

   But sadly, somewhere in the last 100 years it’s gotten badly distorted, and most people recognize that. Something has gone badly wrong with our new global multi-nationals and their now lawless operations. Again, just as was seen with the infamous British East India Company, way back when. This bring it up to date:

   http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/how-american-corporations-transformed-from-producers-to-predators.html

   There’s also plenty of laws (and entire government agencies like the EPA & SEC) that do indeed regulate corporations and cause them to have plenty of reporting requirements & obligations. It’s just that enforcement has always been spotty & haphazard, politically biased everywhere. Again, history does matter, if you’re making declarations like that. JMP

8. 

   Trevor Southerland

   April 4, 2012

   Who’s talking about a law or the definition of a corporation?

   Moral obligations should matter.

9. 

   ire

   April 4, 2012

   No, they don’t. They ought to but corporations exist solely to deliver profits for shareholders, nothing else. Whether they ought to, should to or can is utterly irrelevant though to anything other than liberals’ wishes to make corporations something other than they are. I mean hell there’s not even a law that shows they have any obligations beyond the basic taxes and shareholder interests.

10. 

    Trevor Southerland

    April 4, 2012

    Gee, thanks for your insight.

    But the answer we were looking for was “yes.”

11. 

    ed

    April 4, 2012

    “Does corporate America have an obligation to help solve America’s problems?”

    No.