Long Now Foundation: Incorruptible by Design

The Long Now Foundation runs its talks series on civilization-scale timescales; Eric's, at the Cowell Theater in Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, was hosted by Denise Hearn, the foundation's Director of Strategic Initiatives. He proposed redefining profit as the maximization of human flourishing and described what he calls mission transmission, building a company around a coherent set of values so that profit follows from them.

“How do we architect accountability mechanisms that outlive their creators? What governance structures remain resilient across generations of technological, economic, and cultural transformation?” — Long Now Foundation

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Reactions (3)

Jennifer Tharp Board Chair & Governance Consultant

“Eric believes that corporate corruption is not a moral failure. It's structural. He calls it 'financial gravity' — the same way a bridge doesn't collapse because it's evil, companies don't betray their missions because their founders are bad people. Their governance structures and financial incentives bend them that way. Some of the 'best practices' we teach in business school actually destroy value. Shareholder primacy? An idea none of us voted on, that we simply inherited — and one that he argues is no longer even good for investors.”
Nathalie Brochstein Founder, Karibu.ai

“Mission drift is a structural failure, not an ethical one. Ries defines Financial Gravity as the systemic pressure that pulls successful companies away from their purpose. The more successful a company becomes, the more vulnerable its mission is to extraction. Founders often wait until after product-market fit to address governance, but by then, the target is too large to protect. Protective structures must be built into the corporate charter from day one. Success alone will not protect your mission. If you do not design for human flourishing in your legal architecture today, the system will design you out of your mission tomorrow.”
Denise Hearn Author & Advisor

“There's a not-so-quiet revolution underway — companies embedding their values through economic and legal structures that advance human flourishing and resist the forces of 'financial gravity.' Many things we take as economic or financial gospel are quite young in the span of human commercial time: today's profit measurements, shareholder primacy, stock buybacks (which were illegal until 1982), and many other business 'best practices' which are actually value destroyers. Lesson: We made all this up, so we can do it differently.”