To All the MNCs

I write this letter, not with excitement, but disappointment towards how you have been making

money in the past two decades. The early origins of money proved that money was created so

that our lives became easier. Money was introduced into the social system, and it was assumed

that money would bring societies together. Money was doing a good job, until people with

bigger brains started to exploit the system. Greed came into the picture. While people earned to

live their lives smoothly, there was an emergence of a new mindset, the mindset of living to earn.

Max Weber distinguished the society into Protestants and Catholics. It was the protestants with

the capitalist spirit of earning, while the Catholics were self-driven people, who earned to live

(WEBER, 1930).

While I agree with some of Weber’s ideas, I believed as the modern world evolved, as did the

definitions of our society. Weber predicted that everyone in the modern era would have a

protestant mindset, due to capitalism. I partially agree with the statement with a minor

readjustment. The definition of protestants. Capitalism in the new world means blindly earning

money, disregarding any rule in the book or any ethical conduct. It was rightly said by Paul Van

Der Merwe, that money makes the world go around. This quote is more relevant in the modern

era, with most of the individuals’ life revolving around money. Money was invented to facilitate

exchange, make lives more convenient. But in the modern era we notice our lives have become

more complex, just because we want more pieces of paper (money) in our hand. This is the case

for most of the large corporations and MNCs as well.

I believe most of the large organizations have become monsters that no one believed they would

transform into. Every entrepreneur wants to benefit the society and starts their venture with the

same objective. Then the capitalist mindset kicks in. While they try to overpower that thinking, it
eventually takes over. This is when these organizations start earning the real buck. The brain of

the organization is focused on one thing, to earn. It was Milton Freidman in 1970 who stated that

there is only one responsibility of a business, to earn as much profits by staying within the rules

(The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits, 1970). This idea encouraged

corporations to go crazy in the new era, disregarding the second half of Freidman’s statement

‘staying within the rules’. But what happens if you turn too greedy? Things collapse. That’s

exactly what we saw in the case of many instances, one of the biggest being the global financial

crisis of 2008. The crisis was not only a mismanagement of mortgages falling apart, but instead,

it was just due to a simple reason, the banks wanted to earn more. We saw another instance in

2015 when Wells Fargo was accused of the account fraud scandal, which was caused so that the

top management, headed by John Stumpf could earn money (The Wells Fargo Cross-Selling

Scandal, 2019). There are countless more but there is no point discussing all of them.

I do not discourage earning money, but it must be considered, earning money on the cost of

society or the general public is a completely different thing. It is the common man who suffers

the most in these catastrophes. When does this stop? We must look at internal solutions, within

the organizations, and within the humans themselves. It is considered that ethics and sound

judgement cannot go together in an organization. This is only true for an organization which has

narrow goals, like maximization of shareholder value. If the organizations were to take decisions

in favour of all of its stakeholders, the sound judgement would automatically prove to be an

ethical one (Dembinski, 2007). The Bible states greed as one of 7 deadly sins. It could be argued

that greed might be one of the biggest sins in humans, as it usually causes extreme behaviors.

Money amplified greed and gave it a measure. Greed is subconsciously attached to money

nowadays. The richest people in the world could spend money on everything in this world and
still be left with billions of dollars, which does not have a point. They could simply end world

hunger and poverty, but they choose not to. Why? Greed. They do not look greedy from the

outside face of it, but then this act of not acting proves it (Ganesh, 2020). This capitalist spirit

does not have a cap due to which the number just keeps on rising.

It was after 50 years of Milton Freidman’s article, in the 2019 at the Business Roundtable

conference in which all the big corporations decided to divert their objectives from earning more

profits and maximizing shareholder value to providing value to all their major five stakeholders.

But after all these organizations have done till now, who knows if this might just be a stunt to

gain attention (Six Reasons We Don’t Trust The New “Stakeholder” Promise From The Business

Roundtable, 2020). In spite of the challenges which may arise to these proposed solutions, there

seem to be positive signs. Transforming a practice 50 years old will take time, but we shall see a

gradual change in the future towards a focus on stakeholders rather than only shareholders. Its

time to come together as a society, before money collapses it completely. We see people losing

trust in monetary systems, just because the rich get richer and vice versa. It is the rich, who need

to take responsibility. If they want the system to continue, they must convince the others that the

system is trustworthy.

This a request to all the MNCs and their CEOs. In these tough times the world is facing right

now, we do not need exploitation, but support. Mark Zuckerberg could be called the strongest

man in the world arguably, even powerful than the POTUS as he can just call off the POTUS’

social media accounts with a click. We need these leaders to make use of the money and power

they have earned, to good use. Because if they are to continue their old capitalist and selfish

practices, the day is not far when the whole system of money will fail. Money has the power to

disintegrate and unify people (Simmel, 1978). While the disintegration has taken place plenty
number of times, it is time to unify the society now. Moreover, there needs to be a systemic

change towards what we think of money. We somehow need to detach greed from money in our

minds, otherwise another crisis or scandal might be on the brink. A change in our mindset from a

selfish to a collective mentality might assist that.

From ‘living to earn’, we must change our outlook to ‘earn to live’. This would eliminate the

social stratification based on money and the judgement based on occupations. This living to earn

approach would do immense good to society, with the big companies also focused on serving

society rather than serving themselves. While I do believe this shift in attitude could take

decades, we must start before it is too late. And I expect the business leaders to initiate this shift.

I hope this can bring a transformation towards how you think of money, and how to make sense

of it. Thanking you,

Yours Sincerely,

Maanav Gupta
Bibliography

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