The profiteers How business privatizes profits and socializes costs

Big business is "exploiting the public commons while convincing us that repair is our individual responsibility," according to this impassioned exposé. Marquis (Mao and Markets), a professor at the Cambridge University Judge School of Business, points out that Amazon relies on public roads to deliver its packages, yet paid only 6% in federal corporate income taxes in 2021 despite record profits. Walmart, in turn, pays some employees so poorly that they qualify for food stamps, shifting the responsibility for supporting workers to government benefit systems. Examining how businesses shirk blame for environmental pollution, Marquis contends that plastic recycling allows companies to continue manufacturing wasteful single-use items while placing the onus for proper disposal on consumers, even though most plastic labeled as recyclable can't be reused and gets sent from recycling facilities to landfills. Marquis enrages readers with his accounts of corporate chicanery, but he injects some hope by highlighting individuals and organizations working to change flawed economic incentives. For instance, he discusses how in 2020 entrepreneur Eric Ries launched the Long-Term Stock Exchange, which seeks to curb the reckless pursuit of short-term profits by requiring listed companies to "measure success in years and decades." The result is a galvanizing call to rein in corporate malfeasance. Agent: Jane von Mehren, Aevitas Creative Management. (May)

How profits can follow responsible business practices. Business professor, lecturer, and Forbes columnist Marquis mounts a sharp critique of businesses that have hidden the negative social and environmental impacts of the ways they produce and deliver their products and services. "Behind a smoke screen of rhetoric about individual responsibility and personal choice," writes the author, "corporations and their leaders ruthlessly pursue their own interests, shifting the blame for the harms they cause onto society at large." These businesses typically use two strategies to deflect responsibility for environmental pollution, labor exploitation, and systemic discrimination: gaslighting, which presents "a false view of reality with the aim of convincing the 'victim' (i.e. us) that they are responsible for a wrong that the gaslighter committed," and greenwashing, whereby companies publicize an ecologically sound image--a new logo or advertising slogan--"while continuing to operate in the same dirty way they always have." Marquis points out, for example, the "big lie" told by the Plastics Industry Association about recycling: Most plastics are not recyclable, instead ending up in landfills. In presenting practical ideas for reform, Marquis sees a growing movement from "a linear 'take, make, waste' orientation to one where virtuous cycles drive positive change." Among many companies working to eliminate pollution and reduce their carbon footprints are the shoe manufacturer Allbirds, furniture superstore IKEA, personal care enterprise Dr. Bronner's, household cleaning supply company Seventh Generation, and clothing manufacturer Patagonia. The establishment of benefit corporations and B-corporate certification has spread internationally as a result of shareholder activism and corporate collaboration. In addition to programs for recycling and reuse, many companies are actively promoting reduced consumption. "Doing well by doing good," Marquis reveals, "is an easy pill for the public to swallow, and companies know this." A forceful argument for genuine business accountability. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.