One thing I'll toss out there that I think has changed where this balance lays is the rise is the amount of companies that are public now versus 60 years ago.
If you have a private company you can make more tradeoffs between short term capital gain and long term growth. You can choose to not make quite as much money in the short term to do things like invest in the community and improve your reputation and standing. More private companies are family owned and planning takes place on a personal basis for a generation or two down the road. Public companies usually don't have those luxuries. They have to deliver growth every single quarter. In some instances you'll get shareholders that are willing to wait on profitability in unusual situations (see Amazon when they first started and didn't plan to be profitable for 10 years), but for the most part it is a mantra of grow grow grow, hit those numbers, or perish. CEO's can talk about investing in the community, but if they do anything that might piss off an influential shareholder, they will not only be shown the door, they could be sued for breach of fiscal responsibility. The big mutual funds aren't in the business of trying to encourage corporations to be good citizens. They are in the business of getting every dime of profitability out of those companies right now because that's what their shareholders expect. I'm not saying that it makes them bad people or anything, it is just the way the system is. Consequently, I think that rules and regulations need to adapt to a new reality where a much larger portion of companies are public or expect to go public. I'm not against companies going public. I'm sitting on options at my new company and have talked with the CEO about plans for a public offering in the future. But the mix of public and private companies should be taken into account when thinking about the social impact of our business climate and we should deal with what is, not what we theoretically think things should be like in Adam Smith's world. Judah On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:12 AM, Robert Munn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I can agree with that sentiment. Where exactly the balance is, well that's > another question. All I know is that California is a perfect example of how > not to do it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:274535 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
