Warren Looks to Reshape Capitalism

With an eye toward a 2020 platform, Senator Elizabeth Warren introduces the Accountable Capitalism Act

The past week or so has seen a surge in commentary on the role of corporations in society, a theme familiar to readers of this site. While it might be convenient to peg the trend to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s newly minted Accountable Capitalism Act (more on that in a second), I think it’s more likely that — finally — our collective will is turning to our most logical and obvious instrument of social change, namely, the instrument of business.

We humans like to organize ourselves into social units. They range from the informal (pickup basketball games) to the elaborately structured (Senate hearings). Our ability to harness collective will is unsurpassed in the animal kingdom, it’s one of our key evolutionary adaptations, driving the success of our species across the globe.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, one of our most sophisticated social structures is the corporation, which has co-evolved with our various systems of government over the past half millennium or so. The very first corporations were in fact formed (or chartered) by governments — the Dutch East India Company is the most common example of this. In the past century, however, corporations have largely sought to shake the yoke of government regulation — and nowhere have corporations won more freedoms than in the United States, where firms are now considered legal persons with an unrestrained right to “free speech” (IE, the ability to fund political positions).

So this is where we are today: Large corporations have the legal right to exercise unlimited influence over our political sphere, and the commercial imperative to control (and profit from) nearly all our society’s data. That kind of power will necessarily produce a backlash, one that’s found an articulate, but highly unlikely, argument in Senator Warren’s proposed legislation. (Continue to the new NewCo Shift site for more…)