Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Existing corporations can already do what you describe.

The fiction that a corporation's fiduciary duty to its shareholders means "profits above all else" didn't become a thing until the 1980s, when Reagan's "greed is good" became the driving mantra of capitalism.

A "B" corporation, for example, is just a C corporation that has voluntarily agreed to a set of governance rules.



'Profits above all else' came primarily from three sources: 1) The 'Chicago School' emerging from the University of Chicago economics department, most active from the 1950's to the 1970's, and of which Milton Friedman was the exemplar; 2) The 'Powell Memo' that corporate lobbyist and later Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell wrote to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1971; and 3) The efforts of Robert Bork, who was a militant critic of antitrust regulation and believed that mergers and acquisitions were good because they always lowered prices for consumers, and led to the creation of greater shareholder wealth.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: