In her article, recently published on evonomics.com,

What Is Radical Economics? (Hint: It’s Not Neoliberal or Marxist)

Julie Nelson, professor of economics and department chair at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and a senior research fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, writes:

Take, for example, the belief that firms must maximize profit. One might think that economists discovered this belief by studying businesses, but in fact they invented it. It’s a convenient assumption because it turns the analysis of firms’ behavior into a simple calculus problem, and that satisfies economists’ desire for physics-like regularities. But profit maximization isn’t actually legally mandated. Nor is it an inevitable result of competition. If anything, life here is imitating fiction, since business leaders and investors increasingly appear to believe that maximizing profits (for which read greed) is not only permissible but required.

Whatif

profit maximization is a principle of enterprise design through investment decision-making using the currently popular corporate finance investing framework? The law does not require profit maximization. The corporate finance investing framework does.

If that is true, then those of us who vote with those who vote that the corporate system is not giving us the result we need, want and we expect we should be getting can maybe find a hopeful pathway to a new future of more that is better by exploring the possibilities for adaptively evolving a new investment decision-making framework that will value the values we want to be valuing in the design of enterprise.

Whatif

there are possibilities for creating by design new investment decision-making frameworks that also invite civic engagement in enterprise design?

Julie also writes, in her article, above:

Citizen boycotts, shareholder resolutions, and other public campaigns are time-honored ways of calling powers to account. When we undertake such strategies for change, we may find that there are many people inside these companies who also want to work for a better world.