The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs

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.

About the Author

Christopher Marquis is the Sinyi Professor at the University of Cambridge Judge School of Business. Prior to Cambridge he spent seventeen years at Cornell, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Kennedy School. He writes a regular column for Forbes and his work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Fortune, TIME, Foreign Policy, The Hill and Harvard Business Review as well as many academic journals ranging from the Academy of Management Journal, American Sociological Review, to Stanford Social Innovation Review. He is active on the lecture circuit at venues ranging from the National Association of Corporate Directors and SOCAP Global to the Conference Board, Young Presidents Association, and the Business of Purpose Conference. His previous books, Better Business: How the B Corp is Remaking Capitalism and Mao and Markets, a Financial Times  “Best Book of 2022,” were published by Yale University Press.