The Origin Of ‘The World’s Dumbest Idea’: Milton Friedman
If you are like me, old enough to remember a time when this country wasn’t prostrate to corporations, you may enjoy this Forbes article by Steve Denning. It does a great job tracing our current problems back to their source (a September 1970 NYT article by Milton Friedman).
If you are too young to remember when executives were not paid in stocks, and corporations were actually interested in something other than making profits at any cost, when decency factored into corporate decision making, you may be shocked and titillated to find out that our bleak and blasted, dog-eat-dog hellscape is a fairly modern invention.
Anyway – young or old, read this article. It is the best, most concise, and illuminating take on modern capitalism that I’ve ever read.
I just have to give this article one more plug before it fades away.
Most important sentence in the article: “Maximizing shareholder value thus turned out to be the disease of which it purported to be the cure.”
The only way to convince the greedy is to show them that this approach isn’t the most profitable.
That IS a good article. And at least it’s somewhat encouraging.
Although I don’t see where those who are despoiling the planet have gotten the message…
That the morally bankrupt philosophy jumped, so effortlessly, to conservative politics, then to democratic politicians is interesting to me.