Many in the United States have come to believe that corporations have the rights of persons. They are judged by the profit they return to those who provide capital and expect a return on that investment.

The benefit that those corporations may provide to the “common good” is not measured and is valued only insofar as it contributes to the shareholders’ return on investment. By definition, corporations are intended to benefit those who have. What benefits or harms the common good, or those who have not, is not of primary concern. Decisions are made by their effect on profit.

What would be the effect of replacing, in the word “shareholder,” the letters “h” with “t,” and “r” with “k”?

What if corporations were responsible not only to those who profit from the corporation’s activities, the shareholders, but also to all those affected by that corporation’s mission, the stakeholders? Stakeholders includes shareholders, but also staff, employees, users of the product or beneficiaries of the services provided, those affected by activities (environmental or otherwise). And let’s elevate the common good to stakeholder status as well.

The aim is to reorient the moral compass of political, economic and social leadership. The lodestar would shift from shareholder profit to the benefit of humankind, from resource extraction to ecological balance, from “more for me” to “enough for all,” from arrogant certainty to empathetic listening, conflict to compromise, war to peace.

Changing those two little letters in our political and economic lexicon might start the needed transformation of our post-pandemic society.

David Whittlesey
Brunswick

Copy the Story Link