Bentley writes about some important insights about our society when reading an amusing piece about Mike Merrill who sold shares in himself, and thus giving "owners" power to rule over himself. There were many problems in this arrangement for Merrill's more intimate relationships as there are, of course, with corporations in relation to their employees, customers, and in the communities where their operations are located. Bentley was struck with the following insight while most people were only amused by Merrill's experience:
The only difference between public corporations and Mike Merrill is that we’ve come to accept the consequences of absentee ownership as “normal” in the context of publicly traded companies, so we’re blind to their pathologies. When the same thing happens in an unusual context, it’s easy to see what’s wrong with it.
Any dysfunction can seem perfectly normal if we’re sufficiently used to it. But that doesn’t mean the world wouldn’t be a much better place if we woke up to the problem and fixed it.