Social Machines
I wrote in a post a while back that corporations are social machines that exist for the sole purpose of making money. Because of that, I said, you can’t expect corporations like ExxonMobil to bother developing new sustainable energies, because they’re already making tons of money selling old, non-sustainable energies. And that’s all they ultimately exist for. To ask them to do anything else is to misunderstand the nature of the machine.
Now former labor secretary Robert B. Reich has written a book on this subject, Supercapitalism, arguing that we should see corporations for what they are, and not anthropomorphize them. The book “urges new and strengthened laws and regulations to restore authority to the citizens in us” and argues that we ought to “separate capitalism from democracy, and guard the border between them” (quotes from a Publishers Weekly review on the Amazon page linked to above).
Haven’t read the book yet, but it looks like provocative reading. Will have to check it out over the holiday.
