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Comment by avs733 | Hacker News Reader

> If you agree with the narrative of shareholder primacy

I've really begun to notice that there is a large group of people who see this not as a narrative but as objective and external reality. I see it often on this topic, that capitalism (definitional arguments noted) is not just inherently good - it is in fact inherent. However it seems to increasingly apply to many people's perspectives on social and societal concepts.

I love me some internet...have since I was a kid...but one externality of being able to find and interact with people who think similarly to you is increased coalescence around different realities as realities rather than narratives or perspectives.

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I agree that many people perceive this as an absolute truth, and I have to reluctantly acknowledge Milton Friedman's success in completely changing the narrative around corporate responsibilities. I don't think that the adoption of this narrative is due to the Internet though; the original Supreme Court decision of Dodge v. Ford legally enshrined it and the narrative has been actively taught for a long time. I know that I took it at face value for a long time as a result of my education along with the overwhelming share of my peers so I'd say this has been pushed by a broad segment of society.

At present we do rely on shareholders in different parts of society to fund new ventures -- most of us are here on HN because we worked at a VC-funded startup. Shareholders should get paid out. But workers have a stake in a company, the community has a stake in a company, and society at large has some small stake in a company. We shouldn't select shareholders as the main voting party in the operations of a company when the impacts of company operations are so much wider.

For good examples of companies whose impact was much larger than the shareholders, see also: DuPont/Chemours with PFAS, the manufacturers of CFCs, oil companies, etc.

> I don't think that the adoption of this narrative is due to the Internet though;

Clarifying…I meant the narratives in general, not this particular one. When your information sphere becomes narrowed, whatever narratives are within it tend to be reinforced and over time become inseparable from reality. Left and right, Russian and American, etc. it doesn’t matter it happens.

You are correct, but the sphere is larger than it ever was today, and the effect was much more pronounced in the past. There was a time when a full 15% of the American population was regularly watching Walter Cronkite each night. A lot of the counter culture movement of the 1970s was a reaction against this prescribed capitalist reality that the vast majority of the population bought into.

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