A one legged stool
A One Legged Stool: How Shareholder Primacy has Broken Business (and what we can do about it)
By Ed Chambliss
Copyright 2022 by Best Friends Brands, LLC
Pages: 270
Price: Paperback Format: $12.95/ eBook Format: $8.99
Thank you, Mr. Chambliss for writing this book!
Even though this book is only a month old, it is long overdue. I loved this book, maybe it’s because I agree with everything about it including the premise that the Shareholders economics philosophy expounded by Milton Friedman so many decades ago is basically the root of most of what is wrong with our companies and our economy today.
For those of you unfamiliar with that philosophy, here is a brief explanation. What Mr. Friedman was saying, and advocating was that the Shareholders of any company are the most important leg of that proverbial three legged stool. The only purpose of a company is to make money for the shareholders not matter what that takes.
Which means:
·??????Keeping wages as low as possible
·??????Cutting corners on quality and consistency
·??????The ends justifies the means: think Volkswagen emissions scandal
·??????It means millions of dollars into the pockets of our politicians to change the laws in the interests of companies’ shareholders: Think health insurance companies, big pharma, and polluting energy companies
·??????It means electing candidates expounding trickle down economy BS that has led the biggest wage gaps in the history of our company.
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·??????And it means putting our very economy in thee hands of five thousand dollar suited, cocaine sniffing egomaniacs who no matter what they do are consider “too big to fail.
Got it? If you agree, then you are going to like this book. If you don’t agree, then you’d better find religion before you die because things are going to get very hot for you.
Whew! Okay now that I got that off my chest lets’ read what Mr. Chambliss has to say.
“Making shareholder value your prime objective in business is inherently discriminatory. It disproportionately benefits those who are arguably the most well off, while decimating the middle class.”
And by the way in the end, you have a one legged stool and we all know how well that works. Mr. Chambliss argues that we need to bring the stakeholders to the party, or in this case the stool as well. That’s means employees and customers have to be considered for a well-balanced company and more importantly a well-balanced economy,
I have to admit that I read this book three times because it so pushed my buttons. Maybe it’s the right book at the right time but it sure indicates and explains some of the problems we are having in my industry when it comes to labor shortages and the decimation of the American electronics industry over the past twenty fives years as our customers the larges OEMs, for the sake of profits for the shareholders took our technology and literally hand carried it to China. The Chinese did not sneak over here in the middle of the night. Nope we all watched as our largest companies brought it over there for the exclusive fattening of their shareholders.
But…but wait there is hope. Mr. Chambliss lays out a succinct six step plan for business leaders to start improving this situation:
They are:
This is just a teaser. You’re going to have to buy and read the book to discover what each of these steps entails.
The hardest thing about reviewing this book as not being able to cite ever point that Mr. Chambless makes. If I had done that this review would have been longer than his book.
Once again Mr. Chambliss, thank you for writing this book.
And for the rest of you who have wondered what the heck has been happening to our economy and what we can do about it, you owe it to yourself and to your country to buy and read this book.