New Monmouth poll shows primary voters confused about public option vs Medicare For All

[PatrickforO]

34. Yes, I'm writing a series of essays about the corrosive effect the shareholder primacy

doctrine has had on workers, consumers, communities and our environment.

A couple of thoughts:

There is nothing in the law that requires shareholder primacy. That doctrine is nothing but a theory. It is such because most of the players agree it is so. That's it.

As evidence, I call your attention to the corporate lawyer and law professor Lynn Stout, who in 2012 wrote a book called "The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public." This is a sound book, written to refute the shareholder primacy doctrine. In the forward, Stout mentions that this 'ironclad' doctrine is relatively new - prior to about 1980, corporate officers tended to a much wider view of the purpose of a corporation. Then, the Chicago School arises, with Milton Friedman and postulates that shareholder primacy is THE way to go. So we had Enron, the BP Gulf disaster, and so on.

More people are wising up to this issue. Consider Warren's August 2018 legislation called 'The Accountable Capitalism Act.' This legislation, which would not pass in this congress, nor be signed into law by Trump, forces that fiduciary responsibility to expand to other stakeholders, not merely shareholders. I just saw Rep. Katie Porter on Maher, and she spoke about overturning that doctrine.

And, of course, against that backdrop, we have the Federal Reserve Act, which has created a system of scarcity that doesn't have to be. More people are now thinking about, and embracing Modern Monetary Theory in this vein.

The problem is, wasupaloopa, that our current system is simply unsustainable. I mean, morality aside, if we don't do something substantial to reorganize ourselves around human need as opposed to human greed, we will go extinct. That might not be a bad thing, I guess, because if you look at the effect sapiens have had on this planet (check Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens), you see that if we went extinct right now, at this very moment, ALL other species - flora and fauna - would actually be better off. That's saying something.

So, yeah, I'm an economist who tends to democratic socialism - in the sense I genuinely believe that people need to have a say in policies that affect them, at the local, state and national level. To me, that is the definition of democracy. Now, in this republic, we do that, in theory, through those we elect. Unfortunately, as Senator Whitehouse says, we need to get all this dark money and corporate corruption out of DC and our state houses, because it is a cancer.

I think Bernie has been misunderstood when he calls for a 'political revolution.' What he is saying is that when we all get fed up enough and stand up, demanding some change, that change will happen. And, you know, it can either be through this system or a bloody worldwide revolution. But that change is now an existential necessity for our species.