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The GameStop saga shows some "equity" movements are more equal than others.
Stakeholder theory, the corporate version of social justice, attempts to install this hopelessly amorphous concept of "equity" in the business world. Equity, unlike equality, demands different treatment of individuals and different distribution of resources based on need, identity, and historical injustices. But now equity has evolved beyond a political buzzword, and finds growing support in calls for stakeholder capitalism. The animating impulse in big corporate boardrooms today requires cultivating an image of social responsibility. Under this theory business firms should entertain all kinds of noneconomic goals and outcomes. No longer may owners simply concern themselves with profit or loss, but instead must consider the broader societal implications of everything their business does. Whether corporate leaders concern themselves with social justice out of genuine desire or merely to avoid backlash is an open question, but the events of 2020 clearly changed the conversations in boardrooms.
Under the old conception, businesses have four primary elements, namely owners, managers, employees (or vendors), and customers. All four have skin in the game, which is to say their own money or income is involved. The notion of stakeholders inverts this paradigm and grants a degree of power over ostensibly private businesses to those who take no risks and provide no benefit. By undermining the suddenly old-fashioned idea of profit and loss as the guiding principle for business, stakeholder theory calls into question the very existence of millions of businesses big and small—in fact their grubby and narrow focus is simply to make money.
To suggest that the general public or society at large ought to be a de facto partner in any business, based on the interconnected nature of any economy, is to suggest an unlimited and wholesale attack on the concept of private ownership. It is patently antiproperty and implies collectivism by its very conceptual foundation. It insists everyone in society ought to have an interest in and some say over what ostensibly private firms do—and not only with respect to their profits, but even their business practices and mission. Stakeholder theory even creates a starring role for the earth itself, as the ultimate nonrenewable resource which is dubiously always in peril from business.
Continued below.
The GameStop Saga Unravels Stakeholder Theory
The GameStop saga shows some "equity" movements are more equal than others.
Stakeholder theory, the corporate version of social justice, attempts to install this hopelessly amorphous concept of "equity" in the business world. Equity, unlike equality, demands different treatment of individuals and different distribution of resources based on need, identity, and historical injustices. But now equity has evolved beyond a political buzzword, and finds growing support in calls for stakeholder capitalism. The animating impulse in big corporate boardrooms today requires cultivating an image of social responsibility. Under this theory business firms should entertain all kinds of noneconomic goals and outcomes. No longer may owners simply concern themselves with profit or loss, but instead must consider the broader societal implications of everything their business does. Whether corporate leaders concern themselves with social justice out of genuine desire or merely to avoid backlash is an open question, but the events of 2020 clearly changed the conversations in boardrooms.
Under the old conception, businesses have four primary elements, namely owners, managers, employees (or vendors), and customers. All four have skin in the game, which is to say their own money or income is involved. The notion of stakeholders inverts this paradigm and grants a degree of power over ostensibly private businesses to those who take no risks and provide no benefit. By undermining the suddenly old-fashioned idea of profit and loss as the guiding principle for business, stakeholder theory calls into question the very existence of millions of businesses big and small—in fact their grubby and narrow focus is simply to make money.
To suggest that the general public or society at large ought to be a de facto partner in any business, based on the interconnected nature of any economy, is to suggest an unlimited and wholesale attack on the concept of private ownership. It is patently antiproperty and implies collectivism by its very conceptual foundation. It insists everyone in society ought to have an interest in and some say over what ostensibly private firms do—and not only with respect to their profits, but even their business practices and mission. Stakeholder theory even creates a starring role for the earth itself, as the ultimate nonrenewable resource which is dubiously always in peril from business.
Continued below.
The GameStop Saga Unravels Stakeholder Theory
