When to give all the profits away, and let the parts find their own fit.
It follows nature's model of systems design to begin the growth of any system with a business model for multiplying one's control of their environment. That's what happens when planting a seed, that grows by multiplying it's 'secret' internal design, consuming its host environment ever faster, at first. It doesn't pay in the end, though, for either businesses or any other kind of economic system, to keep following that model, as if endlessly getting nature ever more pregnant could be the soul purpose of self-organization.
When you get environments pregnant you also need to budget for child care, is the point. That's the time a growth system stops using its profits for its own self-inflation, and switches to using them instead for discovering its original purposes and nurturing them. Study any kind of growth system that fulfills its own purposes. That's what is done to discover and fulfill their ultimate purposes.
I've written extensively, from numerous perspectives, on both the systems science and financial implications. What's implied is our need to follow nature's example, and instead of investing in self-inflation to consuming our host ever faster…, giving away our profits to find our true purposes in having begun to grow.
Getting the whole system to reorient its purposes, from growth to funding what matters to us... would indeed involve some "rethinking". It might be easier than it seems at first, though, as it seems to be for lots of other kinds of systems in nature that do it casually and simply, without a thought actually. They often succeed by just giving all their products away to see what others make use of. That’s what the cells in organisms and the organisms in ecologies largely do. They don’t give away what is needed for them to operate, though, so there’s some sort of line between what they must give away for the whole to thrive, and must keep for themselves to thrive.
Knowing that it's probably a physical necessity for our survival makes it easy to discard the options that obviously wouldn't work, and send you "back to the drawing borad" looking for the secret to the ones that would...
We know from Buckminster Fullers work on synergy that an organization is greater than the sum of its individuals. The secret internal design in an organization does exist but fails to mature as designed due to externalities which manifest as internal control systems. The power of these externalities are huge and come from simple compounding mistakes over centuries. It's not a conspiracy, we simply built a flawed global financial system. That being said, there is probably nothing that can be done about that quickly without it resulting in war, death, and suffering. Perhaps that is our fate but it is worth a try to transform our organizations in such a way that the externalities exert less pressure.
I agree that giving is part of that equation, but it is a particular type of giving that is necessary. Letting all the brakes off often results in a mess at the bottom of the hill. Knowing which part of the system to let run on faith and which part needs a temporary hand on the brakes is important.
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