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Comment by simmanian | Hacker News Reader

Is it feasible to create a corporate structure that would encourage it to act with the public interest in mind? Are there any known patterns, research, or tries? My very ill-informed mind is thinking of a parent-child structure where the parent gets to veto and only veto decisions made by its children that may be harmful for the general public.

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I'm currently reading an amazing book that touches on this very subject : http://www.marjoriekelly.com/books/owning-our-future/

I would highly recommend if you are interested in this topic.

A benefit corporation perhaps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

Do you know of any successful and "big" companies that follow the structure?

Kickstarter does. https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-now-a-benefi...

Big according to who? Purism is a relevant example[1].

[1] https://puri.sm/posts/purism-now-a-social-purpose-corporatio...

I'm wondering if the next Google can be successful under such a structure, or if it would get outcompeted by a company that treats growth and profit as the only virtue. Companies like Purity is awesome, though.

Per the linked article, B corps are a very new thing -- they started within this decade and not all states even have them yet.

Almost all big companies are older than B corps have existed for. It might be a "wait and see" kind of thing.

Sounds like government regulations?

Thats typically been the way we've managed these kinds of threats/bad actors, but technology is changing so fast and policy makers are hamstrung by bureaucracy, incompetence, apathy or all three.

Yeah, initially my first reaction was "we need regulations" then I realized that's just not going to possible especially in the future. We need a new corporate structure that can compete and reproduce in the current market.

Or additions to / restructuring of the current regulatory bodies so that they can respond to such things faster.

The legal fiction known as a "corporation" is a government regulation. So there's that.

You're getting awfully close to suggesting "democracy in the workplace" on HN aren't you?

What's "public interest"? Why do you think everybody among the public has the same interest and this interest is easily identified and not subject to gaming and corruption by whoever is selected to identify it?

I don't think we need to define what public interest is in a perfect way, because different ideas undergo competition and selection process to be classified as public interest by the society at large. This is what happens today. When people care about global warming, reducing homelessness, etc., it's because these ideas became selected. What I'm wondering is if there's a structural way for these to be seriously considered when a company makes business decisions. Any system can be gamed, of course. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have any system.

But the system already exists. Any company that thinks people care about global warming can start a global-warming related activities and people would support them. Any company that wants to reduce homelessness can start doing something about that, and if people think they are doing it right, they have ways to support this company, both by direct donations and by buying more of their products or services. Why any other system is necessary?

there's this thing called a "non-profit" - it's a good start.

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