Robert Slifka (Founding Engineer, Escape Velocity) — 'enshittification and extraction feel inevitable — but the best practices that make this decline inevitable are recent human inventions'

Robert Slifka — Founding Engineer at Escape Velocity — publishes an insider framing of Incorruptible's argument (27 likes). Grounds the case in the historical framing that shareholder primacy is recent, and announces he has joined Eric Ries and Janice Fraser at Escape Velocity to put the research to work.

“We're living in a moment where enshittification and extraction feel like the inevitable destination of any for-profit venture. For founders, 'raising money' is seen as the end of a long-term mission focus and the beginning of short-term shareholder primacy. We've come to accept this gradual "corruption" of successful companies as though it were as natural and inevitable as gravity. It's not! The research in Eric Ries' book Incorruptible (May 2026) reminds us that the "best practices" that make this decline inevitable, from governance to organizational modeling and management, are recent human inventions. Companies once needed a public purpose to exist, with "shareholder primacy" only recently emerging out of boardrooms and courtrooms in the late 1970s.” — Robert Slifka on LinkedIn