Then suddenly in one long sentence, Microchip slides down its abstraction ladder and exposes itself. “Our synergistic product portfolio empowers disruptive growth trends, including 5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving, and electric vehicles, in key end markets such as automotive, aerospace and defense, communications, consumer, data centers and computing, and industrial.”
Whoa! Many questions arise as I read on for elaborations of these “disruptive growth trends.” There is a list of products such as medical devices and smart meters containing Microchip’s chips and some mention of product lines, its outsourcing of much of its wafer fabrications and then it is on to SEC disclosure requirements about all boilerplate risks to their operations, whether real or hypothetical for some 19 additional pages. More pages about risks, micro-financial statements regarding subsidiaries, exhibits, consolidated balance sheets, income statements, and then detailed notes to these Financial Aggregations. The Report’s final pages end with ever more micro-data of interest to accounting specialists and the cautious SEC.
Company annual reports are obviously self-congratulatory. They, of course, claim they care for the environment, are in compliance with laws, and sensitive to their “human resources” otherwise known as their workers. But one would never know of any serious problems affecting their products that “empower disruptive growth,” the downsides of how these products are used in such new forays as little questioned 5G, unreliable autonomous cars and unlawfully launched weapons of mass destruction, plus the onrushing automation of all human life.
Nothing along these downstream lines concerns Microchip’s leaders who seem OK with ‘we’re just following chip orders.’ The SEC goes along by not requiring different qualities of disclosures and greater shareholder rights. After all, Microchip is only a chip and wafer dispensary, just like the earlier manufacturers of screws, nails, and adhesives. It is as if it is all only a difference in degree instead of major differences in kind for the human race and its exploited natural world.
Microchip knows far more than it is telling. Just like other companies in its industry. “Mums” the word. There are no reflections; it is only about dollars. The Annual Report is telling shareholders to just stick to their monetized appetites and watch the stock split, which makes them feel better along with their 1% dividend.
Not all companies leave their shareholders so deprived of their companies’ information and special forebodings. Publicly held firms such as Interface, Ben & Jerry’s, the early Body Shop, and former Midas Muffler, spoke to the wider ranges of corporate obligations beyond the bottom line.
However, most corporations, especially giants like Apple and ExxonMobil, want it both ways. They want to be viewed legally as “persons” to receive all the constitutional rights as do real human beings, in addition to their added immunities and privileges as enormous powerful artificial entities. Yet they then constantly behave as if they are just amoral (some would say immoral) entities sworn to only maximize profits for shareholders. Why then have the bosses stripped their companies’ owners of almost every power except to say yes to management?
Elizabeth Warren isn’t out to get capitalism. She’s out to save it.
The heart of the Accountable Capitalism Act is a requirement that companies with more than $1 billion in revenue obtain a corporate charter at the federal level, rather than basing themselves in the most loosely regulated state they can find. (Sorry, Delaware.)
This new charter is meant to address an epidemic of bad corporate behavior, especially the tendency of top executives to value profits over wider well-being. It would obligate executives to consider the interests of all corporate stakeholders — including employees, customers and communities — not just shareholders. It would require that at least 40 percent of company board members be elected by employees, an idea known as co-determination. The bill also contains provisions curbing stock buybacks, which tend to benefit only shareholders, and unilateral political expenditures.
.. it’s a distinct break from the neoliberal capitalism of the recent Democratic Party.
In the 1980s, Milton Friedman enshrined the idea of shareholder value maximization, which told businesses that their sole purpose was to maximize profit for their owners. Rather than pushing back against this obviously selfish, wealth-favoring theory, Democrats got on board. Sure, this framing might need a tweak here, a bit of regulation there, or the carrot of a tax break or two. But super-efficient big businesses would keep the broader economy chugging along for everyone — self-interest would mean we’d all win.
.. some 80 percent of stock market value is owned by 10 percent of the population, little of that benefit trickles down to the rest.
.. All that said, the Accountable Capitalism Act still relies on a fundamental belief that capitalism is good, even as a new generation of Democrats wants to upend that system altogether. On the left, winner-take-all competition — which Warren professes to “love,” by the way — is more and more seen as the root of our country’s ills, not something to preserve. A new wave of socialist candidates are loudly making that case.
.. But Warren isn’t out to get capitalism. She’s out to save it. The senator clearly believes that markets can create wealth.