[astrange]

> But that doesn't change the fact that current publicly traded companies are legally required to maximize profits to shareholders above other goals.

There is no law requiring this. The principle that companies should maximize profit was designed to prevent CEO pay going up forever, because if the CEO can make up his own job then he can just pick whatever he's doing best at.

> I want the most powerful companies in the world to be driven by more universally beneficial goals.

I'm not sure companies actually stick to their charters, but anyway you're thinking of public benefit corporations.

I think it's simpler to just make bad things illegal though.

[fndksksvdk]

Yeah, public benefit corps are an example of a better way to organize an institution that has extreme power over humanity. Those aren't even legal in all 50 states. Are any giant multi-nationals organized as a PBC?

Illegal and enforceable are different things. Whether or not Microsoft violated tax law doesn't matter if they can bully the IRS with a big legal team. The concept of 'we can make your legal bills so high it's not worth it even if you win' gives big corps like Microsoft with internal legal teams a different relationship with the law than the rest of us. If our system equally enforced laws, I'd agree with just making bad things illegal, but first we need to fix the fact that it's possible to be above the law.

[astrange]

Benefit corporations don't have to be defined in your state to make one; after all, regular corporations are mostly in Delaware.