inasabaThe Radical Plan to Save the Planet by Working Less: The degrowth movement wants to shrink the economy to address climate change, and create lives with less stuff, less work, and better well-being.
How would business work? Currently a business’s purpose by law is to make money. How would you enforce a different goal without going full centralized economy?
And how is trying to add less value more effective than internalizing externalized costs? For example, co2 is an externalized cost, one companies don’t need to pay for right now, it’s external to them. If we made them pay for it to fund carbon capture at 1 ton removed for every 1 ton emitted, they would decrease their emissions and the rest would be removed. You could do something similar for other ecological issues as well. What’s the benefit of degroth over internalizing?
hoodatninjaHow would business work? Currently a business’s purpose by law is to make money. How would you enforce a different goal without going full centralized economy?
Is the law "a business must make as much money as possible at all times with absolutely no consideration for literally anything else"?
A business can absolutely exist to be self-sustaining and not "always make record profits." You can break even, you can have slow but steady growth. Where is this legal mandate to red line it at all times?
I ran a business for 7 years. Didn't realize I was violating the law the whole time.
I was confusing an obligation to shareholders with an obligation to profit. So if a share holder majority want maximized profit, I think the company needs to do it.
That's not how companies are structured. The CEO does have some power and say and can argue his position. This idea of shareholders just screaming at a CEO going "MORE MORE FASTER FASTER" is both true and false. Under that paradigm how could we wind up with, say, Tom's Shoes? We can critique them all day (there is a lot to critique) but they literally give away one pair of shoes for every pair sold. That's not maximized profit in the short term, it's a long term play. That has value.
But the shareholders can replace members who are not acting what they perceive to be their best interest, right? It seems like eventually the company will conform to what the share holders want.
It seems like if a CEO publicly said they were shrinking the company to benefit the environment, they’d be replaced by the shareholders pretty quickly.
But the shareholders can replace members who are not acting what they perceive to be their best interest, right?
Yes but you make it sound like they're ordering a sandwich. Removing a CEO is a big deal and can have huge repercussions. You need to make sure the reasons are good enough, and "we didn't make quite as much money" is not enough to move most boards.
It seems like if a CEO publicly said they were shrinking the company to benefit the environment, they’d be replaced by the shareholders pretty quickly.
That completely depends on the company and how they're doing it.