Yup. Money is the only language of public companies and that is why controlling ethical impact and climate impact should be handled by the government by extra taxation or fines that direct companies away from bad faith business strategies. I don’t personally see another way. The current infinite growth expectation is getting stupider every day.
Regulation isn’t enough we need a different default behavior. To get a different behavior from companies, we need a new constituency for the leaders of the company to be accountable to. The most natural constituency is the people that work in that company. Then, their own social sympathies to the local community will play a role in their decision making, so the company will behave differently. That along with charging polluters for their social costs could address it
Decisions shouldn’t be dictated by entry level people that have no experience simply because they are a local resident. The business being at odds with itself would produce more random results depending on the involvement of the employees.
If fines and taxes were proportionate to harm done, then companies wouldn’t have any incentive to do harm. It’s simpler and it still allows high level decisions to be made with care and expertise. People rely on their employers to stay in business and support employees after all.
The leaders of the companies would be delegates of the workers in the firm (like a representative democracy).If firms are always worker coops, when interviewing candidates for jobs, they will factor in the fact that these new worker-members will have voting rights within the firm and make sure that they are qualified for that role as well.
The workers should be able to vote out leadership if they are bad
Fines and taxes are good for harms that the legal system can anticipate, which is not all