Like the divine right of kings, it is an increasingly archaic mandate, imposed on an organic system capable of self-governance. For many companies, knowledge is the new source of competitive advantage. To allow shareholders to claim the corporation's increasing wealth when employees play a greater role in creating that wealth, is a misallocation of resources. The rules of corporate accounting were written when nature seemed an unlimited reservoir of resources and an unlimited sink for wastes. That is no longer true, but the rules unconsciously retain the old attitudes.
Public corporations are no longer private.
We fail to see this because we accept the myths that corporations are pieces of private property owned by stockholders, whose primacy is a natural mandate of free markets, just as our ancestors accepted that nations were private kingdoms owned by kings, whose supremacy was a natural mandate of God. We must begin to question things we never thought to question. To see things we never thought to see, though they've always been there - right in front of our eyes. The author invites dialog.