People seem to be continuously disappointed by the fact that public companies are run by professional managers who don't operate from deep principles. But they shouldn't be. It's in everyone's interest that corporations set their sails to the wind and whims of the prevailing culture. It's the essence of capitalism: Give people what they want (especially when they change their minds)! 

Now, as an owner-operator, I can afford to have unpopular principles from time to time. I can afford to earn less than the theoretical maximum from the market as a consequence of these principles. That's because I'm playing with my own money. That's the privilege of being privately held.

But even the most powerful professional CEO is on a short leash from the company's real owners, the shareholders. This is often maligned as the root of all evil in modern capitalism. That we've divorced the owner and the operator. And I think there's a worthy critique of that arrangement to be had, like Burnham in The Managerial Society. But I also think not enough appreciation is afforded this arrangement.

Shareholders, in their Platonic ideal, only care about maximizing profits. That can occasionally be an incentive for amoral behavior, but more often, it's simply a driver towards making stuff that people want. Not what they say they want, but what they actually buy. 

That's why libertarians love to talk about the free-market economy as an information system. Supply-side economics notwithstanding, demand directs production and judges the contestants. If you don't make something people want, they won't buy it, and you'll soon be out of business.

I thought about this today because of two popular marketing campaigns currently running in America. The one by Nike celebrating family, the other by American Eagle celebrating "good jeans". Here's a comparison someone made online using these companies' campaigns from the early 2020s and now:

Quite the contrast! Almost looks like hypocrisy, doesn't it? How can you celebrate obesity one moment, then hour-glass ideals the next? How can you embrace undirected individualism before, then exalt family values at the height of excellence now?

Easy: The vibe changed. Demand changed. Selling 2020 woke platitudes into a 2025 market is a clear way to lose your job as a professional manager. Because it's no longer what people want.

Hell, it's most likely not even the same managers making these diametrically-opposed value judgments. Perhaps not even managers at all, but marketing agencies in tune with said prevailing culture. The big information system of commerce is sending a billion packets of intent all day long and the current message is now crystal clear: Blond babies and boobs are back in business!

This was the original killer insight by the architects of the short-lived woke theocracy: If you can capture culture, you can capture capitalism. But it's one thing to capture culture, it's quite another to hold it.

So now much of mainstream American culture has simply reverted to the roots of capitalism: Making things that most people want. By course-correcting the culture, we've course-corrected commerce. No corporate principles required.