I recommend lecture by economist Dr. Sergei Guriev about how Putin
s autocracy works. Most of the material is explained in the first 10 minutes, then come the examples. Based on actual research papers.
Apart from people, what are the main challenges to get to a stage where it is usable? My guess is that maintaining large indices is nontrivial in multiple aspects.
>> are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth and profit taking) with the way our society is structured?
Purism is trying to do exactly this by being Social Purpose Corporation: https://puri.sm/about/social-purpose/. However, I would not call them a "major company" yet.
I didn’t know there was a difference, thanks. And I’m not disputing purism’s (I looked at their website), just noting that if a corporation doesn’t list their values in their articles of incorporation, then they aren’t really anything more than lip service when push comes to shove.
One common criticism I've heard of benefit corporations is that a hostile takeover or series of leadership changes can result in a situation where the values/goals are just stripped out intentionally, rendering it a normal corporation. Alternately, strip the assets and rights to leave the benefit corporation a husk and transfer everything to a non-benefit corp. It definitely makes me wonder how robust a setup like a B corporation can actually be once unrestrained capitalism gets to act on it for 5-10 years.
Those are definitely realistic scenarios. But in the case of a company that relies heavily on attracting and maintaining talented employees, those actions would probably engender significant blowback as well. At the very least the abandoning of values is a discrete step that is taken, as opposed to an vague degradation of some executives feelings. I do agree that it isn’t a total solution, but I do think there are some other interesting developments in the area, like the Long Term Stock Exchange and Generation Investment Management.
Tech Luddism has nothing to do with these arguments. I do not want tech that someone else controls, because it benefits 'them', not me. I want tech that I can control. See, e.g., Free Software Foundation and Purism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z66N_oKbs0k