How do most people respond when Life has no meaning for them?
As individual investors, we must have verbal goals, such as "get my kids through college," "retire at 45 and travel the world," "make it so my children never have to worry about money," etc. Our verbal goals center around the human life cycle.
Though a company will have a verbally-stated character in the form of its mission and how it makes its money, these things only have a meaning by their individual connections with people. The businesspeople who created those statements may be long gone before a company vanishes, and generations later, perhaps after the advances of technology have rendered the original vision long obsolete, the basic meaning of the company remains the same: its share value or the money it otherwise earns. Yes - all obvious.
Shareholders attach individual meanings to company shares through their personal goals, and such meanings are statistically eliminated because they all meet in the dollar value of the stock. So as time passes, all human values other than dollars will disappear from the behavior of the company - perhaps those values may take some form as part of the vision that is sold to the public (Green products, for example), or through the mortals who guide the company; but these cannot stand up to Stock Price in the context of a publicly-traded company.
Is this too cynical? If it's true, maybe it means that larger private corporations that are held by "benevolent dictators" are better than publicly-traded ones led by CEO's who shift from company to company like mercenaries. Maybe it means that smaller companies, regional or local ones, are more likely to remain "human" and maintain the company's Vision, maintaining boundaries of right and wrong in their efforts to grow in monetary terms.
This reasoning is too trite to be a real answer, but it seems to be most of what we take sides about in our politics. It should make you suspicious of totally-unregulated Capitalism, where dollars by themselves would rule without any of the goodness of people.
Now, I'm no Commie. So don't worry about Fair and Balanced or other false dichotomies. Just beat on these ideas and see what of them survives.
Interesting post. The fact that you start your discussion on the idea of investing based on stated (although ambiguous) is a striking example of what seems to be a transitory experience felt by "aging capitalists".
ReplyDeleteActions based on a tangent future for many of these people.Assumptions are made and acted upon. Assumptions like, "I will live and have sufficient revenue to see these investments reach fruition", as well as assumptions of investment return and so on.
More so than the idea of life not having meaning, this may result from the ceaseless advancement of age. Late at night, deep in the mind's subjective recesses, a scary thought lingers..."I'm getting old and I'm going to die". People living in Western nations tend to feel most able to display their agency through the devices of capitalism.
I found the paragraph "Shareholders attach individual..." to be important, as you begin to link missions statements (ideology) to revenue (material manifestation) and how the ideology may disappear or become "obsolete".
Corporations have tended to appeal to the idea of interjecting culture to an otherwise banal endeavor. Possibly to create differentiation from competitors, or to create a bond with the consumer.
Many of the mission statements I can recall still bare marks of liberal capitalism (in the classical sense not left v. right). The idea that a free market allows individuals to make rational decisions based on the past, present and future; condoning agency through consumption, in essence.
Your question of cynicism is best answered in regard to what result you are oriented toward. If you want corporations to be actively governed by a blanket of ideas e.g. mission statements than perhaps the idea of private/long-term owner is better for you. If you want corporations to maintain dynamic, flexibility perhaps a public corporation with a board of directors and changing leadership is conducive.
i think talking about "boundaries of right and wrong" leans more toward ideology, since the terms are grey by definition. I'm frankly a bit tired of people arguing about what's right and wrong.
I do think that "vision" can paradoxically prove short-sighted.
Chris Harrington