WEBVTT - The 21st Century Corporation 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:09.920 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:13.960 with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:16.600 Well, the so called Magnificent seven, we talk about him 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.759 each and every day. Yes, I'm gonna remind you it's Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:23.959 Amazon and Vidio meta platforms. In Tesla as the group, 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:26.799 they were up close to seventy percent last year, and 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.479 then in twenty twenty three up one hundred and seven percent. 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:31.760 Yet our next guest writes in his new book that 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.400 quote the dominance of the seven is likely to be 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:39.280 as transitory as that of the large business of early generations. 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:42.440 He offers US Steel, General Motors and IBM as examples 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.640 of companies who shares investors wants clamored to buy, just 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:48.320 like these of the mag seven. 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.920 Sir John Ky is a writer, professor, economist, economic consultant, 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.600 a fellow at Saint John's College, Oxford, and more. He 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:58.560 has spent years studying the interplay between business, economics and finance. 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.080 This is so perfect for our audio. His new book 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.240 is The Corporation in the twenty first Century Why almost 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:07.360 everything we are told about business is wrong, which comes 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:10.240 out in the US. Tomorrow's er Kay Joining asked him 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:10.920 from London. 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:13.919 Hey, so John, good to have you with us this afternoon, 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:16.760 this evening. Thanks for joining us. As you write in 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:20.679 the introduction, your target audience is people who would never 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:24.120 normally pick up a business book, people who read popular 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.200 science or history, but might welcome an intellectually serious, even 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:31.320 sometimes challenging approach to a subject with whose detail they 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:34.720 are unfamiliar. Why go for that target audience right now. 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.280 Because there are a lot of people who will intelligent 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:41.680 people who have opinions about business that are formed on 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:44.640 the basis of very little. And as I say, there 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.600 are two kinds of business books and bookshops right One 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.240 of the ones that are five tips is how I 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:56.200 run to run my business better on Monday. And the 0:01:56.240 --> 0:02:00.520 others are how awful capitalism is, and how terrible these 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.160 tech titans are, and how they ought to be cut 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:08.240 down to size, if not put in jail. And I 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.320 want to write for intelligent people who take a view 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:16.040 somewhere in between the two, or I just want to 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:19.400 know about business the way people want to know about 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:20.520 history or science. 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:24.480 Well, when you look at business works, you know, sir John, 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:30.400 when you look at businesses today, it does feel like increasingly, 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:33.360 even though a few years ago it was all about 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:38.240 multiple stakeholders, employees, customer companies, so on and so forth, 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.560 it does feel like it is not necessarily the case, 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:46.760 and increasingly it's about profitability and the c suite. Many 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:51.920 would say this is that fair, and I mean would 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:52.280 be right. 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:57.760 Yeah, well it would be partly right. And the truth 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:02.360 is that business is about creer eating great businesses and 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:04.800 we were striking example of that at the moment. We 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:09.680 have many, but one that is absolutely on your lips 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.960 at the moment is Boeing. And in the second half 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:17.239 of the twentieth century, people at Boeing built a great business, 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.680 the world's dominant aviation producer, and they were clear that 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:24.440 that was what they were doing. Bill Hallen, who was 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:29.880 CEO of Boeing for some time, said we were here 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:34.400 to live, eat and breathe the world about aeronautics. That 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:38.200 was what his Boeing was about, and it built planes 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.120 that came to dominate the world. Then in turn of 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:45.920 the twentieth century there was a takeover or a merger rather, 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:52.360 which was effectively a cultural although not a financial takeover 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:57.800 by MacDonald Douglas of Boeing and Harvest. So In Cipher, 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:02.640 who was CEO of became CEO of Boeing. He had 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:06.280 been a McDonald douglas executive. He became CEO of Boeing 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.520 and he said, people say this is a great engineering company. 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.480 It is, but people invest in a company because they 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.440 want to make money. And we know the things that 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:21.680 followed from that, the seven three seven Max which ended 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.920 in disaster, and now we have this pars of astronauts 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:31.039 are stranded in the International Space Station waiting for Elon 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:36.479 Musk ironically to come and rescue them. So John set 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:40.440 up of great business. They did. Then they emphasized sharehold 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.560 of value and they destroyed in the aird not only 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.480 the business but the shareholder value. 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.160 Well, it sounds like that's a case of incentives not 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:53.760 necessarily being aligned here. And I know as an economist 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:58.080 you study incentives. Are the incentives of the structure that 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:03.440 we have that exists today, are they misaligned? Because companies 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.719 are rewarded for what they're able to do on the 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:08.040 top line and what they're able to do on the 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:11.240 bottom line, that's what they're rewarded for. Is that the 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:12.760 wrong thing for them to be rewarded for. 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:14.839 They're not really rewarded on what they do on the 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.279 top line. They're rewarded on a basis of some three 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:22.520 year metrics and what happens to the stock price. They're 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:27.839 not rewarded for creating shareholder value in the long run, 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.839 which is what these twentieth century Boeing executives actually did. 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.160 The way you create shareholder value actually is you build 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.040 a great business, and if you build a great business, 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:46.640 sharehold sharehold of value follows from that. It's that way round. 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.640 I was interested that one of the reviewers of my 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:56.560 book was someone who had been an English Test international cricketer, 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.599 and he drew my attention to the by football coach 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.520 Bill Walsh that says the score takes care of itself, 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:09.400 and that's the message. If you build a great business, 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:14.920 shareholder value follows from that. Maybe the guys who took 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:19.160 over Boeing in the twenty first century created shareholder value. 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.240 They certainly paid it quite a lot back to shareholders 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:27.640 in the twenty tens, but they did a damage irrevocably. 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.200 I suspect the reputation of the. 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:34.320 Business, Sir John's part of the problem. You know, my husband, 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:35.960 I talk about this all the time, is that we 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:38.440 don't make a lot of stuff anymore. We're such a 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:40.680 service led economy, and I don't know if that has 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.960 changed the dynamics within companies and leaders and so on 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.800 and so forth, And I'm just curious. I'd love to 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:48.640 have you weigh in on that. Is that part of 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:50.200 the problem. 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:53.120 It certainly has happened, but I don't think it's part 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.440 of the problem. And it's almost the opposite of their problem, 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:02.160 because it used to be that businesses were created by capitalists, 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.400 by rich men who spent some of their fortunes on 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:10.160 building seal mills and textile plants and so on, and 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:17.320 employed typically rather unskilled workers to work in them. The 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:23.720 great businesses now are groups of highly qualified, technically proficient people, 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.400 and the business of running the business is to put 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:32.720 together the right combinations of people. So we've had that change, 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:37.200 which has happened so that the means of production are 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.640 now the people, not the plant. But on the other 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.840 side of that, we've had, basically since the nineteen seventies, 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.800 the growth of this idea that the purpose of a 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.760 company is to make money for shareholders, the shareholder value 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:56.160 CREED and these two things have been pulling in opposite 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.880 directions in ways which I think, in the end dam 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.480 to the legitimacy of the whole market economy as we've 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:03.920 known it. 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:07.320 So what is the purpose of a company? 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.040 The purpose of a company is to satisfy a whole 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:15.200 range of stakeholders. The reason we allow companies to exist 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.520 is that they do a lot of things we want done, 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.400 to produce a great product, to give people satisfying jobs, 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:27.400 to make money for shareholders. It isn't any one of 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:31.480 these things. And if you try to make any emphasize 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.440 any one of these things, you do so at the 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:40.240 expense of totality. And the people who break built great businesses, 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:46.120 whether we're talking about Sloan at General Motors, whether we're 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:50.280 talking about Alan Others at Boeing, or whether we're talking 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.920 about the people who built the Magnificent Seven, the tech 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:57.680 companies we all talk about now, they didn't set out 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:00.800 I want to make as much money as possible I 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.640 want to make They certainly didn't say it's set out 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:05.760 to say I want to make a lot of money 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:09.360 for shareholders. They said I want to build a great business, 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.360 and they did, and the course of doing that, they 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:15.800 made a lot of money for shareholders. And that's the 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:20.440 way around it is the sure the score takes care 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:21.160 of itself. 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:24.000 So let's go back to the Magnificent Seven into the 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:26.600 way that we open this, because you do argue in 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.079 the introduction of the book that the mag seven, even 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:33.319 though people are clamoring to buy the shares of those companies, 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:36.280 they're going to be just as transient as some of 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:38.880 those large businesses of earlier generations. 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:44.400 Why is that, Well, they may even be more transient 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.480 because there's strength lies in their people rather than their plant, 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.800 whereas a Carnegie or Ford or General Motives it was 0:09:52.840 --> 0:10:00.640 a plant that determined the business. These dominance is are 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:06.800 always almost always transient. Thirty years ago, when people understood 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:09.720 that information technology was going to be a big thing, 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.839 it was IBM, who as sure as they bought, they 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.720 made that the most valuable company in the world. Now, 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:24.280 Facebook and Meta are top of many people's lists. I 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:30.360 know that Facebook. My grandchildren now think that's something for 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.000 people of my age that's not. 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:37.400 Something we maybe not Instagram and that's and WhatsApp, and 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:39.400 that's what has been their saving grace. 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:42.600 Right well, And there's an issue there that we need 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:47.720 to talk about which is the nature of antitrust policy. 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:52.680 And we allowed mistakenly, in my view, companies like Meta 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:57.000 to take over Instagram and WhatsApp, whereas the whole strength 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:01.480 of the market economy comes from people to new things 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:06.200 to take the place of the things that went before. Actually, 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:12.880 Facebook took over from MySpace, which was the predecessor of 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:18.040 Facebook and providing the kind of space services that Facebook does. 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:23.160 People have forgotten about MySpace now. Interestingly MySpace and I 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.640 talked to executives there as to why things had gone wrong. 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.000 They said because it was bought by News Corp and 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:33.320 read group of murder who were mainly interested in creating 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:34.360 shareholder value. 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:35.199 That's interesting. 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:36.680 So, John, one thing I want to ask you is 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:41.600 if you know your title is why almost everything we 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.200 are told about business is wrong. So if that's the case, 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:49.840 I am wondering in terms of academic research consultants that 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:52.480 abound in terms of you know, trying to figure out 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.200 or try to tell or do tell companies what to do. 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.560 If we were getting it wrong, what's the outcome of that? 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:01.000 And if we don't get it right, if we don't 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.640 maybe perhaps change the academic research about how we think 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:07.320 about companies. If we don't do that, what's the outcome. 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:14.440 I think the outcome is that we get things wrong 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:17.920 in a pretty fundamental way. And in the first half 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:22.200 of the twentieth century, people saw themselves as trying to 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:27.040 create a profession of management, which was a respected profession 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:32.720 like law or medicine or the priesthood or whatever. When 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:36.440 people were called to do that and derived a lot 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:41.160 of the satisfaction of their job, not just from what 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.679 they were paid, but from the feeling that they were 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:50.800 doing contributing something worthwhile to society. We've lost a lot 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.880 of that, and I think it's made business a good 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.240 deal worse as a result. And we can see the 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:02.040 kind of loss of legitimacy followed. The murder of Brian 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:05.480 Thompson three or four weeks ago is a pretty good 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:09.160 example of that. The fact that almost forty percent of 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:13.720 respondents to a pole suggested that that murder was at 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:18.800 least partly justified. It seems to me a terrible commentary 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.400 on the way business is now regarded among a large 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.920 section of the population, particularly the young population. 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:28.440 Is that a commentary on business or is it a 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:31.280 commentary on the structure of healthcare in the United States, 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:35.040 which is a result of decisions that politicians have made. 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:40.800 It's a combination of both. I mean that health care. 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:46.000 Healthcare is the forefront of that because again, go back 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.720 to into the twentieth century and you see how healthcare 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:55.640 created antibiotics and vaccines and other drugs that saved lives 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:58.719 and made a great deal of money for the companies 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:02.960 that produced them. We've now moved from a health to 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:07.800 a healthcare sector that is largely people see it as 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.240 being rather there to make as much money from us 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.440 as possible from our need from healthcare. And that's why 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:21.800 people seem to approve of the murder of Thompson, who 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:25.840 fifty years ago would have been appalled by it, as 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:26.360 they should be. 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:30.200 So where do we go or again, I want to 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.320 kind of dig to, you know, the repercussions, and I 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.720 do actually think about how politics fits into all of 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.720 this of a society that doesn't feel like they're represented anymore. 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.080 I mean, if you've got you know, I think this 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:45.680 is from your own website, you know, the widening gap 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:49.360 between executives and employees is destabilizing our societies. Facebook and 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:51.640 Google have more customers than any companies in history, but 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:56.840 are widely reviled. So I do wonder, I don't know, 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.160 is there a realization and and we come out on 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:04.960 a different side, a different view of the relationship between 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.640 employee and employer, Like where does this all go in 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:10.960 your view? Or how does it? What's the dark scenario? 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:12.320 Yeah, go ahead. 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.800 We've had a culture change in the last fifty years 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:21.360 in the wrong direction. I described how in the first 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:25.240 half of the twentieth century through to nineteen seventies and eighties, 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.040 we had the idea that we were trying to create 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:35.200 a professional management and people who were employed in large 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:40.080 companies were there to create great businesses. The shareholder value 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:45.000 idea that businesses are just about making money has got 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:46.440 in the way of that now. And this is not 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:49.680 to say businesses are not there to make money. They 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.960 are there to make money, but they're not just there 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.000 to make money. And if they're just there to make money, 0:15:56.320 --> 0:16:00.840 they're not that successful even at making money. I think 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.680 Percerns famously had about a sign saying we make nothing 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.360 but money, and it's interesting that they ended up not 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:11.520 making any of that. Is there a. 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:13.200 Company and we're just got about a minute or so 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:15.120 that you look at and say, Okay, they've got to 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:19.080 kind of right the relationship between employer and employee. That 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:21.040 maybe is a model for the way forward. 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:25.800 Perhaps I think there's not a model in that sense 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.720 because people cannot talk the right rhetoric. But if I 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:33.320 go back to the twentieth century, if I go back 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.480 to General Motors and IBM and as they were in 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:42.160 the years we've talked about the people who were working 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.080 in them, the people who were running them, the people 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.000 who worked for them, knew that they were there to 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:52.800 create businesses, great businesses, and if you create great businesses, 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:55.840 you make a lot of money for stockholders. That's the 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:59.040 way round it is, and that's the most important point 0:16:59.240 --> 0:16:59.840 to get across. 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:02.960 So then what was the result of their down Why 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:04.920 did they have a downfall? What happened? 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.840 I think it was a set of social changes that 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:15.200 happened as a result of the nineteen sixties. We can 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:17.800 I talk about this at some length in the book 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.760 money Can't Buy Me Love, Can't buy you Love, which 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.080 was the great be Beatles song of the sixties. And 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.680 then I say, well, perhaps it can. And that's about 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:34.200 the academic work that followed from that. It's easy to 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:39.400 date it to Freedman's article in nineteen seventy it said 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:43.679 the social responsibility of a company is to maximize it profits. 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:51.240 Perhaps more significant was the Powell Memorandum, written by Lewis Powell, 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:55.639 who became a Supreme Court judge, which tried to persuade 0:17:55.720 --> 0:18:01.280 business that the way they made themselves more legitimate was 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:05.640 to sponsor the right kind of academic research. And they're 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:09.720 very successful in that. And the Cato Institute and Theage 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:14.879 Heritage Foundation, the Business Roundtable or was set up in 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.240 the nineteen seventies in response to this kind of thing, 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:21.520 and we can see that in the end it hasn't 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:24.400 made business more legitimate, it's being made it less. 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:26.920 So think about Peter Goodman's book, right, we were talking 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:27.360 about this. 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:29.040 In the world ran out of everything. 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:31.520 Right, in the role of consultants, many things at play, 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.000 but you know, everybody outsourcing looking to kind of do 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:36.879 things in a more efficient way, or so in the 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:39.240 supply chains that moved outside the United States. 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:41.480 And the Business Roundtable back in twenty nineteen with that 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:44.000 letter that you know, that statement of purpose of a 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.040 corporation that tried to sort of redefine the purpose. 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:48.639 Of a company that was what six years ago at 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:49.119 this point. 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:50.800 Well, sir John K, you gave us a lot to 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:53.000 think about, so appreciate your time and good luck with 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:54.199 the book. Really appreciate it. 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:55.239 Things measure to joak to you. 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:58.919 The new book, The Corporation in the twenty first Century, 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.440 Why almost everything we are told about business is wrong, 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:04.160 comes out in the United States tomorrow