This new C-suite sanctimony about no longer treating shareholder returns as the sole purpose of the corporation is all well and good, but did these latter-day Princes of the Church ever actually ASK the owners of the property over which they dispose if that's what THEY want?
Their predecessors showed similar arrogance in taking the widow's mite -offered in Christian charity- from the collection box, as well as the tithes levied ostensibly to support their mission, & lavishing it on self-enrichment, artworks, even wars. Look how THAT worked out!
Moreover, there's a certain insidious sundering of duty from privilege, of risk from reward, involved here.
"I am a philanthropist-by-proxy," the #corporate Croesuses can say: "so I don't have to run the businesses to generate income, just plaudits fom my equally-smug peers."
Hard targets are therefore renounced in place of soft, conveniently fuzzy, feelgood objectives and the firm becomes an outsourced arm of the Welfare State - if one blown hither and yon on its course by whatever the Twitter Mob currently demands, or #Davos decrees.
Again, fine, if that's a transformation with which the majority of direct shareholders -plus the policy holders of life insurance and pension claimants who own it indirectly (NOT those institutions' eqaully canting executives)- have expressed their accord. But...
...no-one seems to be proposing to seek that accord.
Moreover, if Megaglobal, Inc, is now going to become some sort of Eco-fantasist, #UN-driven secular monastery, its #CEO's pay needs to be suitably adjusted -DOWNWARDS- to reflect HIS oh-so honourable rejection of Mammon
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.