We Need to Shift from Pleasing the Shareholders to Serving the Stakeholders

We are all aware of the economic crisis in the world, where the gap between the poor and the rich is getting wider by the minute, leaving billions of fellow human beings struggling to survive.
There are many ideas and discussions about how to solve these problems, and different economic systems have been passionately analyzed in detail with no solution in sight.
As is my habit, I try to simplify the problem to grasp it better and not get lost in the ocean of data and details.
I have realized that in almost all cases, the goal of a company or firm is to please the shareholders and not the people they eventually affect.
To clarify this concept, we should first define these two terms.
Shareholder:
A person or institution that has invested money in a corporation in exchange for a “share” of the ownership.

Stakeholder:
A person or a group with a vested interest or stake in the decision-making and activities of a business, organization or project. Based on these criteria, stakeholders often include customers, employees, investors, and suppliers.

For simplicity, I use “shareholders” to symbolize the self-interest that has been the driving force or the engine of the system (suggested by Adam Smith, who has been called by many the father of the economic system) and “stakeholders” to symbolize the welfare of the public—ordinary members of a community or country that the economic system is trying to serve. The system should target and strive to achieve the welfare, happiness, and financial security of those rather than increase share prices or higher profits.

If humanity is to achieve happiness and unite, there must be a fundamental shift in our thinking process and vision. The different institutions of the world must change their direction to one that is new and filled with human and spiritual values.

Shoghi Effendi explains:

“If long-cherished ideals and time-honoured institutions, if certain social assumptions and religious formulae have ceased to promote the welfare of the generality of mankind, if they no longer minister to the needs of a continually evolving humanity, let them be swept away and relegated to the limbo of obsolescent and forgotten doctrines. Why should these, in a world subject to the immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the deterioration that must needs overtake every human institution? For legal standards, political and economic theories are solely designed to safeguard the interests of humanity as a whole, and not humanity to be crucified for the preservation of the integrity of any particular law or doctrine.”

This shift in the mindset implies seeing the bigger picture and the whole of humanity rather than a small portion of society who have accumulated a vast majority of the financial resources and also revisiting the wasteful expenditures on war industries and military purposes and redirecting them to humanitarian purposes and the advancement of sciences that promote the well-being of humanity.

“The economic resources of the world will be organized, its sources of raw materials will be tapped and fully utilized, its markets will be coordinated and developed, and the distribution of its products will be equitably regulated.
… The enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of human inventions and technical development, to the increase of the productivity of mankind, to the extermination of disease, to the extension of scientific research, to the raising of the standard of physical health, to the sharpening and refinement of the human brain, to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet, to the prolongation of human life, and to the furtherance of any other agency that can stimulate the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.” -Shoghi Effendi

As the problems of the world increase and also the intensity of crises increases with it, humanity, not by choice but rather by force, hopefully sooner than later, has to face the reality that the scope of the problems has reached such a level that is beyond the ability of the most intelligent minds to resolve. A new approach and a new way of looking for a solution is needed. And hopefully, a realization that human and moral values must be included in the formulation and application of the system to remedy the diseases of the ailing world.
The other prerequisite is the understanding that there are two kinds of civilization, and a balance between the two is the solution.
Abdu’l-Baha explained this concept beautifully:

“And among the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh is that although material civilization is one of the means for the progress of the world of mankind, yet until it becomes combined with Divine civilization, the desired result, which is the felicity of mankind, will not be attained. Consider! …all these weapons of war are the malignant fruits of material civilization. Had material civilization been combined with Divine civilization, these fiery weapons would never have been invented. Nay, rather, human energy would have been wholly devoted to useful inventions and would have been concentrated on praiseworthy discoveries. Material civilization is like a lamp-glass. Divine civilization is the lamp itself and the glass without the light is dark. Material civilization is like the body. No matter how infinitely graceful, elegant and beautiful it may be, it is dead. Divine civilization is like the spirit, and the body gets its life from the spirit, otherwise it becomes a corpse. It has thus been made evident that the world of mankind is in need of the breaths of the Holy Spirit. Without the spirit the world of mankind is lifeless, and without this light the world of mankind is in utter darkness. For the world of nature is an animal world. Until man is born again from the world of nature, that is to say, becomes detached from the world of nature, he is essentially an animal, and it is the teachings of God which convert this animal into a human soul.

The history of economics, with its focus on profit at any cost and with no attention paid to the plight of the poor, has created this extreme disparity between the “haves” and “have nots”, and has brought humanity to the brink of a collapse. It is time to rethink our assumptions about the economic system and start building it by introducing human, moral, and spiritual values to the system before it is too late.