“THEY WERE GARGANTUAN creatures. The earth was helpless before them as they devoured at their leisure whatever in their path might satisfy their appetites for another day.”

Of course, this quote might be from a curator leading a fifth grade class through the Natural Science Exhibit on dinosaurs. But it could also be a future curator—from an orbiting city— lecturing about the now extinct giant corporations – many of them with sales figures that dwarfed the economic output of whole countries. “These “machines” as we now think of them, were so focused on meeting their insatiable quotas for growth, they altered the proximate ecosphere and even economically colonized the inhabitants. Of course, after exhausting the resources of the surface they scoured the ocean floor, and looked to space. ”   [Note that the review of Dune informs this introduction]

A breakthrough documentary I saw in 2003, The Corporation, foretold the events of today. The film traces the evolution of the very focused and purposeful modern machine that takes form as a “C” Corporation. They highlighted the short-sighted and unsustainable nature of the “more” model–which in the film is likened to our own “Frankenstein’s Monster” and even gets classified as a “sociopath” when assessed by the metric of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Most people aren’t aware that this organizational model has only one legal purpose: to add value for shareholders.  And most people do not consider that the Founders of the US did not envision the evolution of structures with such disproportionate economic and political power. And most people aren’t aware that there are alternative corporate structures, “stakeholder” models, that feature multiple mandates and purposes that include the environment, suppliers, customers, employees, and community. Welcome to the Certified “B” corporation.

Facebook elicits most of the same unsustainable  traits of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banking, or Big You-Name-It: they place profit growth above the welfare of the host they rely upon. In the words of the harshest critics of the modern for-profit public companies, theirs is a “cancer strategy.”

Just because Facebook is a free medium for information–not unlike Google in that sense–doesn’t mean that it cannot do great harm.  It may not emit harmful particles into the air or water, and it may not sell products that lead to addiction or cancer. It may not lend at usurious levels of interest or fees. But it could sell our data, pollute our minds with misinformation, and prey on our natural attentions and addictions to drama, conflict, and fear-based conspiracy theories.

In the fight for tax reform and anti-trust regulation, we see the power of the lobbyists who wield billions to protect future trillions on behalf of the more machines. Sadly, their power is more entrenched when you realize that their shares represent much of America’s retirement wealth.

But there’s a way to fix a lot of this: you can begin to insist that the companies whose products and services you consume are Certified B Corporations. That way, your interests and well being would have a seat on the Board of Directors and be legally represented in law.

WRH