Apple and Amazon are valued by public markets far in excess of their tangible assets, because of their “intangibles” in R&D and brand recognition. By historic standards, they own very little.
In contrast, AerCap and Prologis are among the world’s largest owners of the “means of production.” One leases aircraft to most large airlines. The other is the world’s largest industrial real estate company, leasing warehouses and data centers. They own the stuff.
Both “are nevertheless rather unimportant intermediaries in the modern economy” that now reflect “a long chain of intermediation” that means the system is more distributed. Yet our view and language about how companies fit into our world hasn’t changed.
That’s from The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong, a 2024 book by knighted economist John Kay.
The old industrial meaning of “capital” meant the owned means of production — mills, railways, steel plants, assembly lines. In many modern firms, Kay argues, those assets are fungible, often rented, and less important than the firm’s collective capabilities.
Among his criticisms is how today’s shareholder priority has distracted from the corporation’s origins as a device of the state. Executives can extract value in the short term, but this narrow-mindedness is provably harmful to corporations in the medium term. Business and economics thought has become far too self interested. Its champions treat “collective action” and “collective knowledge” as accidental overflow rather than our truly natural state. The book is thoughtful and important, given that its from among its closest insiders.
Below I have my notes for future reference.
Continue reading The corporation was invented to serve the people