Book Review: The Profiteers
Joshua Caldwell
How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs
Christopher Marquis (disclaimer we chatted briefly via Linkedin) writes about the dominance of shareholder primacy and its affects on the public common. They draw a line delineating from the era of Jack Welch as a major inflection point for this type of unsustainable business in ways that feel both nuanced and deliberate, but also miss the underpinnings of the failure of capitalism.
The book is broken into three parts:
Part I: How and Why We All Pay For Business's Free Lunch
Part II: Broken Systems and Innovative Solutions
Part III: Building a Regenerative Economy for the Twenty-First Century
The best way I can describe the book as a leftist and socialist is a framework for operating within an oppressive system, though the author never quite gets to the mea culpa that capitalism is inherently extractive by nature, there are some great examples of corporations that you should support in their efforts to take into consideration their impact outside of just fiduciary duty.
Link to book in photo.
Some Orgs To Check Out:
- Native
- Ecosia
- Allbirds
- Numi Organic Tea
- Just Salad
- Tony Chocoloney