IThere is a widespread discourse in the community of economists according to which public policies are the alpha and omega of macroeconomic balances. Companies would have no role in regulation and would simply apply the rules given to them; the never-denied rationality of the shareholder would thus govern the strategy, in accordance with the imposed regulation.
This is an obviously simplistic and empirically false vision, which has the disadvantage of erasing three realities at the heart of the contemporary economy. First, in recent decades, large companies have gained in international size and financial dimension, to the point of having decision-making autonomy which gives them considerable market power, as we see every day in the technology or raw materials sector. Second, large companies prosper on the basis of hidden costs (carbon emissions, environmental footprint, exploitation of advantageous social differentials, tax dumping), which are not taken into account in global regulation. Third, the institutional power of companies weighs on public policies and orients them more often in favor of optimizing returns than preserving common goods and societal balances.
It is for these reasons that the so-called “corporate social responsibility” movement was invented at the end of the 20th century.e century, notably by international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the United Nations, to try to reconcile a free enterprise economy, which entrusts administrators with decision-making appropriate to their interests, with “taking into consideration social and environmental issues”enshrined in these terms by the Pacte law of 2019, relating to the growth and transformation of businesses.
Freedom and Democracy
Considering that it is up to the law to set the decarbonization objectives of private companies like TotalEnergies, economists deny the freedom of these large groups to set objectives which aim for more than opportunity yield. This very “Friedmanian” vision of macroeconomists is not only dated, it is profoundly dangerous from the point of view of the defense of free enterprise and the market economy, which are part of the Western fundamentals of political democracy. If this does not include a citizen component in the economy, there will then only be one model of capitalism, the one that each sovereign State controls or pilots as it wishes!
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