Better to harness society’s idle resources while removing the mechanisms of corporate malfeasance

So writes Yeomin Yoon, Professor of Finance and International Business, who teaches international finance, financial and economic analysis and a course in global business at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

His educational philosophy is that every class is to some degree a class in ethics.

In the FT he recently discussed the advent of the electronic marketplace which currently offer shopping carts, e-catalogs, and support services such as order placing, payment and fulfilment.

The electronic markets supplanting companies as the organising force behind economic exchange will probably bring more benefits than costs to society, in his opinion:

Reduce corporate tax breaks, subsidies and political pressure

“The expected demise of corporations as the dominant economic institution driving exchange should be welcomed, as it would reduce corporate political pressure which distorts democratic processes; and corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks and subsidies deforming the course of the economy.

“Adam Smith, who warned in The Wealth of Nations that “negligence and profusion” would inevitably result when businesses are organised as corporations, would applaud the onset of a more automated economy — one that better harnesses society’s idle resources while removing the mechanisms of corporate malfeasance”.

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