Rage against the machine, not the man

Recent violence directed at a prominent business leader has produced a confused public reaction. The clearer read is that the rage is real, the target is wrong, and the machinery of business we have built is what has become hostile to the people who operate it, invest in it, and depend on it.

Modern corporations have been tuned for decades against a single objective, the maximization of self gain. That works as an optimization function and it produces measurable economic growth. It also produces a culture that runs on fear, keeps people stuck in survival mode, and treats the collateral damage of the business as an externality. The wealth grows and the sense of community shrinks at the same time.

ESG was an attempt to widen that objective. Done earnestly, it can begin to align corporate behavior with the communities a business depends on. Done as a marketing layer over the same optimization function, it changes nothing. The recent backlash against ESG mostly reflects the second version, not the first.

Nature offers a sharper design pattern. Living systems evolve through two mechanisms most corporate structures actively resist, mortality and sexual selection. Older organisms die so newer, better adapted versions can take their place. Traits get selected based on what helps the next generation survive. Organizations that are designed to live forever, with no mechanism to retire, accumulate advantage from age rather than fitness and eventually crowd out the very innovation they once produced.

The implication for founders, boards, and investors is direct. Build corporate models that include planned renewal, real accountability to stakeholders beyond shareholders, and selection pressure that rewards alignment with the world the business actually lives in. That is not anti capitalist. It is capitalism with the evolutionary feedback loop reconnected.

The work ahead is on the architecture of business, not on individual people. The full version of this argument, including a practical path to what I call corporate mortality, is in Chapter 7 of Evolving Energy.

Originally shared on LinkedIn.