The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Profiteers How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs By Christopher Marquis

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

The Profiteers How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs By Christopher Marquis https://amzn.to/3R0CbbB An exposé of how society pays for corporations' "free lunch" and the cost of environmental damage, low wages, systemic discrimination, and cheap goods. In an age when business leaders solemnly profess dedication to principles of environmental and social justice, Christopher Marquis’s provocative investigation into the real costs of doing business reveals the way that leaders of the corporate world gaslight to evade responsibilities by privatizing profits and socializing costs. “Who pays?” for the resulting climate and environmental damage, racism, low wages, and cheap goods: the average citizen and the taxpayer. By bringing to light ideas that today are on the fringe but rapidly making their way into the mainstream, Marquis outlines a new regenerative paradigm for business in society. He tells of a group of pioneers trying to not just reform but transform the way business is conducted all over the world. By taking novel actions to reimagine business operations in responsible ways, minimize their negative impacts, and create new ways for business to properly absorb their hidden costs, these leaders provide blueprints to move the needle on vexing social and environmental issues. What’s in it for leaders of the corporate world? The model of reform presented provides clear guidance on how to get ahead of the curve as an emerging economic order is formed. No business can lead from the front if it is morally-backward looking. History has shown time and again that those who get out in front of emerging changes in our social and environmental landscape protect themselves from inevitable eclipse.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. There you go. The shriller lady sings it. That makes it official.

Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. As always, we bring you the most smartest people in the world. The CEO, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the people who write these amazing books with amazing stories that teach you everything you need to know in life. We bring it to you for 16 years, over 2,000 episodes. And you guys should just be the most smartest people in our audience in the world at this point, or, you know, halfway there. Anyway, we have an amazing author on the show.

He's the author of the newest book that just came out, May 14th, 2024. It's called The Profiteers, How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs. We have Christopher Marquis on the show with us today. And he, in his new book, it's an expose of how society pays for corporations' free lunch at the cost of environmental damage, low wages,

systematic discrimination, and cheap goods. So we'll be talking to him about his insights there. He is the Signe, is that correctly, professor? You got it correct. It's great. There you go. The Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management at the University of Cambridge and author of the latest book. His research examines business sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

And he's written two prior award-winning books, Better Business, How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism, and Mao and the Markets, the Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise. He's passionate about how academic research can help people around the world address some of the biggest crises of our day, including climate change, inequality, and racism. Welcome to the show, Christopher. How are you? I'm great. Thanks so much, Chris. Really appreciate you having me on. Really appreciate you coming on. We really appreciate it. Thanks for coming. I'm having a Monday, I guess. Congratulations on the new book, GiveUsShit.com. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Sure. It's my name, chrismarquis.com. That's an easy

place. I'm also LinkedIn. If you Google me, also you can get my university website too. There you go. Give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? Sure. You know, as you described, the thing I really focus on is how a lot of the costs for companies, they don't have to pay basically. So things like, you know, pollution they put in the air, you know, we pay for that through

health issues, people in the community, you know, we pay for that through health issues, people in the community, you know, things like climate change, but that's not priced. So companies don't pay. And I go through and I talk both about how that that idea pervades a lot of different sort of sectors in areas. But also, and the reason why I think it's important to sort of have a book to focus on this is that for, you know, 50 plus years, companies have been actually very actively both lobbying and having PR campaigns to actually convince us that they should not have responsibility for that. So part of it is, you know, trying to, you know, identify maybe who should be paying those costs.

Ah, is an example of that, like, you know, employees at Walmart or low-paying fast food, different joints, and their employees are having to live off public dole and welfare because they can't make ends meet? Is that an example in your book? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And how we're basically supporting those employees and basically supporting those businesses. Yeah. I mean, people are on, in many cases, food stamps,

obviously no health care, and the public pays for that. The taxpayers in the United States pay for that in this case, and Walmart gets access to cheaper labor and higher profits. And makes billions funding Wall Street investors. Sounds like capitalism to me. It is. So definitely, it is a, you know, this is something I don't think we can just sort of blame and shame, be it sort of Walmart or whomever. But I think that, you know, part of what I, you know, hope to do through the book is by really explaining that it's not just about sort of Walmart, but it's actually about bigger

systems issues that if people understand that actually, you know, they're paying for a lot of basically corporate profits. And of course, you know, companies will say, oh, you know, we should have the free freedom to, you know, do whatever, you know, exercise business however we want. Sure. But actually they're impinging on all of our freedom and we're paying for basically you know as a public their investors to actually you know get get more profits yeah i mean it's you know billionaires you know they're globus they they work around the world and live

around the world and they love countries where they can just do whatever the hell they want of course that's what a lot of their battle is from my understanding with our with lobbyists and the supreme court and trying to you know get business on their side you know they've won several different ways to do that you know now you can just buy a politician you can buy a scotus member evidently you just need a free rv and you got your own who knew it was just an rv man i evidently it has to be at least a winnebago or something it's a nice rv though it's actually really nice rv it's actually i i saw clarence thomas interviewed once and and he corrected the person it's actually not there's some other category that this it's like a converted bus and so it's it's there's some other category that this it's like a converted bus and so it's it's there's some

other category actually and i i don't i can't remember what it is but we're not yes i think it's in the constitution if it's an rv fuck democracy i think that's amendment 30 so give us a little bit of history on you what sure how did you grow up? What influence did you become in academia and writing books? Sure. Yeah. So I grew up, I get this a lot now. The last two years I've been at Cambridge, which is in the UK. And frequently people are surprised that I'm not British. So I'm American. I just moved to the UK two years ago. So British accent hasn't rubbed off on me yet. I grew up in Pittsburgh and spent most of my sort of working life in the northeastern U.S. And I think, you know, I've mostly worked at business schools. However, I don't know if it was my upbringing or, you know, through my education,

just became really interested in understanding how business could actually play a positive role in alleviating our societal and environmental issues. And I must say that really, you know, we highlighted this profiteering part, which is the title of the book. But a lot of the book is really trying to understand how businesses can be more responsible in trying to internalize those costs in ways that both don't end up charging the public, but also so many of the companies I've studied really find this as an amazing fountain for innovation. You know, if you're trying to actually, you know, create new ways of doing business,

it actually drives a lot of innovation. Oh, so does that offset the cost to the public? Do you find in your example? I, you know, I mean, it's, it's, these are very complex things to tabulate pros and cons. But, but I know, certainly, anecdotally, anecdotally, companies find, you know, if they're being very creative and innovative in their sustainability work, are things that in many cases you know may lead them to be more efficient may lead to new products categories etc you know this is something where you know human resources i think is a big deal too so if a company really stands for something has values you know a lot of the the youth nowadays want to really work for companies that have a purpose. And so I do think it's something where actually being responsible and being sustainable, it's

a long-term play. There you go. So it's kind of, we have to balance and weigh and decide, you know, is the price worth the cost, I suppose. Right. Yeah. you know is the is the is the is the price worth the cost i suppose right yeah yeah there's a there's a famous line from rush that was saying we will pay the cost but we'll pay the price or something of that oh yeah i was a rush fan when i was growing up but i don't i don't i don't know that i don't know that one it was off for all the bones but it it basically played in that premise of you know we'll pay the price but we do but do we really evaluate the cost of what it actually costs us?

And I think that's what you've done here. So what do you suggest in the book that we do with the information when we're analyzing whether companies are, you know, doing more good than evil or vice versa? Sure. So I think there's a couple things that can be done. I mean, in many ways, you know, yeah. So I think there's a couple things that can be done. I mean, in many ways, you know, yeah. So there's things individuals can do. I mean, I think knowing, you know, having a better way of evaluating what companies are doing, the right things versus the wrong things, I think is useful, you know, as consumers.

I think also knowing more generally areas where there might be abuses basically of the broader economic and societal system, I think it's helpful to help policymakers. I think you're seeing this now around carbon emissions and taxing and markets. I think that people are realizing that this is something where, you know, business has been getting a free lunch, basically, you know, the, you know, the sky is basically free air fill for admissions, creating lots of lots of damage. And that's something where companies are starting, you know, sort of policymakers are starting to get engaged. It's a pretty substantially around the world. Plastic is another thing I look at quite a bit in the book. And this is something

where, you know, there's increasing action at the state level to try to actually limit that. People and entrepreneurs are working to create, to basically avoid and eliminate plastic, because, you know, as you probably know, you know, we've all been convinced that we should be recycling. And of course, you know, we should be recycling, but recycling actually doesn't work, sadly enough. Plastic recycling doesn't work. You know, if you look at the, I don't even know how many billions or whatever of tons of plastic have been produced, you know, historically less than 10% of that has actually been recycled. There's, you know's all kinds of problems with that process.

So the company is actually convincing us that we should be recycling as an example I give where companies are really just trying to put the onus on us and actually not thinking consciously about ways that they should be redesigning their supply chain, redesigning their types of materials, et cetera. There you go. There was somebody we had on the show years ago and they called that term, like with the bullshit behind the plastic and the recycling, they called it green something. Do you know the term I'm thinking of? There's green washing.

Green washing, that's it. Green washing. Yeah. I mean, so I don't know if you're listeners and you're interested in some of these interesting terms that exist, but there's a couple of them that I think. So greenwashing they actually are underlying it. And this is actually came about from the hotel industry. You know, we've, you've probably stayed in hotels, we've stayed in hotels, and there's a card that says, you know, we care about the environment, you know, hang up your towel. Turns out, a hotel executive wrote an article, I think it was the 1980s. When this start with this was starting to catch on, he said, you know, we don't care about the environment. We care about saving money.

You know, we don't want to hire the people to be sort of collecting and washing the towels, actually washing them too much actually creates wear, and then we have to buy new ones. So this is just basically about us saving money. That's one term. I do cover that a bit in the book. Yeah. McDonald's has been accused of it coca-cola yeah a lot of greenwashing out there what are some of

the other terms that you want to familiarize us with yeah so another one another one is astroturfing i don't know if you've heard of astroturfing so uh this is when you're catching yeah that's yeah there's all kinds of football things like turf toe and all these things. I haven't heard of those in this context. But astroturfing actually refers to when companies form grassroots-sounding organizations to lobby the government. Because the government wants to hear from NGOs and citizens groups.

But frequently, actually, there's companies behind those. And, you know, AstroTurf is fake grass. So the idea being that sort of fake grassroots organizations are AstroTurf. That's another one. There you go. What are some others that you want to share? Sure. Green hushing. This has been in to share sure i green hushing you might this

has been in the news green hushing i'm learning everything today yeah so this is another one where companies are wanting to you know sort of they they might put a big target on their back if they talk about green things so actually they're less likely to target about so they're they're hush hushing on the green thing oh they don't they don to target about so they're they're hush hushing on the green thing oh they don't they don't brag about it in case anybody starts they don't brag yeah exactly the deets is exactly i don't know yeah maybe yeah maybe maybe 20 years ago it sounds like there's a lot what hold on anyway just age me the i'm the same yeah yeah there you go so it's not like there's a lot of

games being played with this I know Tesla for a lot of years wasn't their core revenue playing games with carbon credits oh exactly yeah I forget it might have been the state of California I forget yeah so

a huge amount of their revenue they were able to because of producing electric cars there was some tax benefit were they able to sell some of the carbon credits exactly yeah yeah and you're just like wait are you supposed to be a car company making cars and then shitty things that look like cyber truck microwaves and i just saw one of those for the first time on the road it was great they're bigger than i thought they would be actually yeah they're just as ugly as i thought

they would be i just yeah they are an hour ago or something where are you located chris utah okay got it they have a dealership here and i always see it when i pass the freeway but this one drove right by me oh got it and i was like wow so that's that's what a that's what uh what that's what a stainless steel australian garbage can looks like yeah i've been pretty critical and give them a lot of shit because there's like all these design issues and breakdown and totally avoid the warranty if you wash them in a car wash oh geez i saw one that was painted actually i painted painted a like a neon green it was quite a quite there quite some i saw one this morning it was painted like uh general lee from from the

oh really the dude's hazard yeah they had the on on the side but evidently one of the problems you have is if you wash it like in a i don't know if it rains it it would do the same thing. But if you wash it in a car wash, the structure underneath the frame will retain the water in pools. But, you know, it's eventually going to start smelling really great. And it'll eat, you know, into the car because the water is staying in there. It's not going to. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. They showed how they take apart and showed how they... One of the problems they finally got dealt with was the thing had a problem where there was a stainless steel slider or metal slider over the gas pedal. And it just literally, you would some cases and then it would jam up

against the dashboard and it would stay stay fully down which you know school crossings evidently they had to recall that but yeah it's just been a i just i just every day it's like a whole new interesting thing so what are some other topics in your book that we want to tease out to people to pick it up that sure so let me say say a couple of things. A lot of the inspiration for me in doing this was from actually talking to entrepreneurs who were thinking very thoughtfully about how to actually be responsible. And so I have a lot of case studies and examples of how companies can be more responsible in these realms. So one example is a company, Growth Collaborative, which sort of sells, makes and sells home goods, health and beauty type products. They have a pretty good website.

They both do their own products and do products of sustainable companies like Seven Generation, Mrs. Meyers, Dr. Bronner's, et cetera. And so actually when inspiration for this book really came to me when I was talking to the CEO there, a guy named Stu Landsberg. And what he said to me was, you know, as a business in this, you know, home goods space, our biggest challenge is plastic. And actually use the term externality so this the subtitle my book privatizing profit and socializing cost you know expresses this dry economics term externality and he says you know we're dedicated to actually eliminating these externalities and and why i think this is important is because so much of the responsible business topics today focus on stakeholders, like stakeholder capitalism, stakeholder management. And a lot of times, I think that is

actually just a more sophisticated style of greenwashing, where companies are doing selective positive things for these, you know, employee groups or communities. But actually, if you look at their core of their business, they're not really addressing that. So the thing that, you know, Stu Landsberg, you know, really identified to me, we need to be looking at the core of businesses. And so they set on this journey that created innovation. So they reformulated a bunch of products. So shampoo, I know now, but I didn't know back when I was talking to them.

Actually, shampoo doesn't need to be a liquid. Actually, you can have bar shampoos. Oh, really? Yeah, totally. It seems strange, but it works. You know, the last two years I've used bar shampoos. Really? I think we just, yeah.

It doesn't have to be packaged in plastic. So this is an example of sort of an innovation. You know, they also, you know, created like an internal carbon tax. So they've redesigned their P&Ls and badging around plastic. So this is one example of how a company is using, you know, sort of, it's sort of creating this drive for innovation

by being responsible for their- I guess bar shampoos, they don't require, I'm seeing, I'm looking online at these. They don't require like the bottle, the plastic bottle. Exactly. And you can just sell sell them it looks like some people sell them on cardboard exactly and it's obviously i mean it's it for many many reasons it's actually a much more sustainable alternative yeah but we're sort of in the shower yeah yeah exactly and you would think that it wouldn't you know like if you've ever used soap

like in your hair i mean it doesn't really lather very much but at least the ones that i've used actually work as effectively as regular regular shampoo i think most men do that already don't we don't they just take the broth soap right yeah i'm sort of guilty of that many times yeah definitely i saw a diagram the other day of how men wash. And it's like we wash kind of the middle part, the underarms, and then maybe our hair. And then we just let everything else work its way down. Like anything below the kneecaps never gets washed. You just kind of figure the gravity and stuff takes care of it all.

That's what I do. I haven't washed my feet in like 5,000 years, which is probably the green or black. One of those colors. Whichever is funnier, people just go with it. But no, I'm really looking at this now. Online, there's a lot of these shampoo bars. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I'm going to have to check them out.

I know that estrogenics is a big deal. I don't know if you looked into any of that, i know i didn't a lot of soaps and stuff and detergents have estrogenics sure and it's attacking men's testosterone and actually giving women the beginning of their of their of their menstruations earlier by year uh-huh yeah it it you know it doesn't surprise me actually a lot of the yeah i mean the the level of sort of chemicals and you know hormone types of of you know in in our products is really pretty pretty tremendous one of the things i do look at is actually sort of hormones and antibiotics in beef supply chains actually this is something that you know you know and one of the reasons why i look at that actually. This is something that, you know,

and one of the reasons why I look at that is because that's something that now investors are actually putting a lot of attention on because of some of these spillover costs that occur. So you might've heard that there's all the potential issues around antibiotic resistance. So because there's so much antibiotics in our world through

the food we eat, et cetera, you know, people are becoming much more resistant to antibiotics so that, you know, if you actually get like a serious cut or, you know, have a serious infection, actually, sometimes it takes people a lot longer to heal. So this is an example of one of these spillover costs to society that I talk about in the book. And why I think it's an important one is that actually investors are realizing that, you know, McDonald's, for instance, you know, buys a lot of meat that uses these processes. But actually, if you think about an investor, other companies in their portfolio, healthcare companies, you know, are actually bearing those sort of spillover

costs. And so, McDonald's, for instance, they've, investors have started to give them a hard time through shareholder votes and pressuring the board to stop using these sort of hormones, chemicals, antibiotics in their supply chain because of this, you know, problem.

That's unfortunate, because I usually, when I order a Big big mac i'll just rub it on whatever wound and it helps i think part of it's a multi-use product yeah it's part of the secret sauce i think that's that helps there it gives me a rash for a while i'm not sure what that's about but just rubbing on any wound folks don't do that the lawyers are gonna call me you know what about the what about the things that mcdonald's and companies are doing where they're doing the what do they call them the basically industrial food you know these industrial food scapes of pig farming yes totally and i imagine there's some sort of you know environmental fallout of that and there's huge environmental fallouts and it's all i mean another issue is that you know, environmental fallout of that. There's huge environmental fallouts. And it's all, I mean, another issue is that, you know, these, I mean,

it's, you know, I've driven past some of these before. I mean, this is, you might have, the smell is horrible. You know, there's in the air, you know, the sort of feces spray gets in the air. And, you know, it's, and people that live in those areas have severe respiratory issues. So, you know, these are things that actually then disproportionately affect sort of lower income areas. Because if those are the people

that have much less political power, and so, you know, if these were ever in any sort of wealthy area, you know, they'd be put out of business in a second because you know they they obviously the wealthy folks would actually be able to you know affect change within the government probably to either have these outlawed or have them moved or whatever so it's a real sort of race to the bottom in where many of these things get put there you go in none of my backyard but poor people have right exactly exactly yeah it's an interesting thing you know so i mean it's it's something we need to look at like i think i quoted rush earlier and he appeared we will pay the price but we won't yes consider

the cost and this is a really big aspect because you know there's so much that we do you know you look at what you know i grew up in the era before there was the EPA with harder putting that in. I got to tell you, tires washing up on shores and rivers on fire, I mean, that was kind of fun, really, when you think about it. And I imagine those are some good examples of where the cost of what companies were getting away with wasn't that good for other people when it came to health and stuff. Yeah. because you know you you might remember one example of astroturfing is do you remember the

the the the advertisement it's sort of called the crying indian advertisement where yeah i i mean this was put out by you know the packaging association you know it's it's the the name the name of the organization is like keep america beautiful is the is the name of the organization but actually it's about it's it's it's by you know dow chemical and various packaging companies and and so they they want people to think that it's that it's our responsibility to take care of trash but certainly we all should. But really, I mean, if we're thinking about it,

our responsibility, we're going to put less attention on these packaging companies. So that's a case in point of both astroturfing and then also this deflection of responsibility to people so that companies are not as focused you know, as focused on it. There you go. People need to read your book. What's a quick tease out to what people can do better? Can they just vote better politicians that are regulate this stuff and not put in the

pocket of these big companies? Certainly, I think, yeah, political change is important. But I think also, you know, think about the companies that you buy from. You know, there's, you know, we talked about Growth Collaborative and, you know, Patagonia is another example there's a lot of companies that are actually responsible doing you know doing the right thing and i think those are the those are the key you know that i'd say that's that's the key thing is just be thoughtful in your purchasing and mean, as someone who has a, a teenage daughter, I mean, I know that the allure of, of she and, and fast fashion is, is tough to get over, but I think also we need,

we need to be thinking about, you know, sort of this not over consumption by quality things. Don't buy cheap things. Yeah. There you go. You know, I'm going to read your book when I, I've got a dinner for mcdonald's you know i'll read your book when i'm over there no i'm just kidding i'll read your book i'm just not gonna read it mcdonald's the you know plus you can rip the pages off and put them in the in the burger and it'll probably taste better and it's fiber for you folks we're making sure you get your fiber consumption but read the damn book first before you start eating it. So, Christopher, it's been one flight of the mountain.

Give us your final pitch out to people to pick up the book and where they can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, chrismarcus.com. Please be in touch. You can get my email there. You can email me through University of Cambridge. You know, I'm passionate about this issue of companies doing better and love to connect to to people who are also engaged in that so please always feel free to be in touch with me would love to talk to you

there you go consider the cost of all that stuff it's just insane to me you know the world you and i grew up in you know we had glass stuff for a lot of things in recital sure but it's just insane to me how you know watching people with bottled water like i was i first started seeing bottled water we're like you guys don't have faucets what the fuck i had the same thought yeah exactly it's just and seeing people just walk out of costco with crates of it you're just like wow there you go yeah fun is fun order up the book folks wherever fine books are sold the profiteers how business privatizes profits and socializes costs that we all end up paying for usually.

May 14th, 2024 is when it came out. And check out Christopher's other books as well. Thanks, Minus, for tuning in. Thanks for Christopher being here. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time. There you go.