[afriend4lyfe]

"Despite Mr. Fink’s insistence that companies benefit society, it’s worth noting he’s not playing down the importance of profits and, while it’s a subtle point, he believes that having social purpose is inextricably linked to a company’s ability to maintain its profits."

Perhaps capitalism is realizing what thinking long term actually means then? The future for humanity is bleak if we continue down the path of unsustainable business practices. At this point we really do know better. We can't allow our only natural habitat to be exhausted for the sake a few luxurious generations.

At the current rate our businesses are exploiting the environment and people, it's honestly hard to say what's bound to happen first, the planet reaching its limit or the poor eating the rich. Either way, change gon' come. Hopefully we avoid all of that and start thinking about more than just our own immediate futures.

In this way, I think the real long term strategy is to inject some compassion and empathy into business.

[betageek]

That's an optimistic view, but think (late) capitalism is realising that it's putting it's own short term profits in jeopardy, and it's just good business to recognise that.

It's pretty obvious there's a growing wave of consumers that are realising that capitalism may be out of control in regards to social issues like the environment and workforce exploitation, and this can have a real and immediate impact on the companies profits and stock price if uncovered - Volkswagen lost 64% of it's value in a few months after the emissions scandal and profits were down 20%. The likelihood that corporate misdeeds are uncovered is only increasing as whistleblowing and hacking become more common.

People seem to think protecting shareholder value only involves growing the company by any means necessary - this was always a ridiculous idea, some growth choices put the whole company at risk, this seems like a nudge to remind companies of that.

[crispyambulance]

    > Perhaps capitalism is realizing...

While it superficially looks good for corporations to "contribute to society" and they will fall over themselves to give lip-service for this idea, such goodwill will VAPORIZE in the instant they're no longer deeply in the black.

Sorry, but capitalism won't "realize" anything by itself. We should not leave any aspect of our social safety net up to the whims of hedge-fund a-holes, financiers and large corporations who have demonstrated over and over and over what they _really_ care about.

[toopok4k3]

There's also self preservation as a motivation in case of sudden abundance of pitchforks.