I am delighted to find businesses that are ethical and treat their communities and employees well as a matter of doing good while doing well. These businesses are rewarded in the marketplace for being good citizens and profitable. They are also what might be described as “long term greedy,” realizing that helping their community thrive will help their business in the long run.

It is a virtuous circle, and the moral nature of business and capitalism has a long history of being addressed by greats such as Adam Smith in both The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and theologian Michael Novak in his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.

Larry Fink Wants to Use Coercion to Recreate Capitalism in His Image

Now Larry Fink of ETF giant BlackRock has demanded that CEOs institutionalize the pursuit of their “social purpose” and the welfare of all so-called stakeholders, and put this on par with making a profit for shareholders while serving their customers.

This seems to me to be a convoluted and coercive solution to the problem a Progressive investor might have with indexing. But, it is easy to solve this problem without turning our companies into social welfare agencies. Become a stock picker or hire one to sell the stocks of companies that don’t meet your standards, and buy the stocks of companies that do. But this would be bad for BlackRock’s index business, so Larry leans on coercion to force companies to abide by his ideals while he can still rake in the fees his company gets from having $6 Trillion under management.

His plan would distract companies and employees from their productive functions to make them hold meetings, write reports, and push paper so that they can show they are keeping up with a new kind of enforced corporate political correctness. Something tells me that value creation and serving customers and shareholders would take a back seat. Larry would have made a great regulator during the Obama Administration.

Don’t Kill the Golden Goose or There Will Be No Wealth to Redistribute

One of the things that has always dumbfounded me is that the Left is so hostile to capitalism. The reality is that wealth must be created before it can be redistributed. So a sensible Progressive should want the economy to do well and create as much wealth and prosperity as possible so they will have it to redistribute. Killing the Golden Goose means no more golden eggs.

If Larry needs to assuage his conscience for being a rich capitalist, why not simply give his money to causes that support his values like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are doing? I guess it’s cheaper to spout nonsense and hang on to his dough. It doesn’t sound like he is living up to his social purpose. But then I guess that depends on who the judge is.

Putting layers of useless guidelines, regulation, and bureaucracy on society so people are spending most of their time shuffling paper and ignoring their productive functions is a recipe for economic malaise at best. Forgive me if I hope people like Mr. Fink are kept as far from the levers of real power as possible.

Where Are the Pragmatists? Two Parties Filled with Fringe Lunatics Doesn’t Leave Voters a Decent Choice

One of the things that stuns me in our current political reality is that both sides are kind of nuts and dominated by their extremes. As bad as Trump is in many ways, at least his policies are focused on unleashing the creativity of the American people through cutting the suffocating regulation of the Obama years. If the Democrats could decide to be pragmatic and business friendly, they could really have something going. But the Far Left seems in control and wants to pursue the socialist policies that Hugo Chavez used to destroy a prosperous Venezuela. Doesn’t seem very promising.

— Charlie Munger