I was invited to speak on a panel on ‘Community and the Market’ at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) Singapore Perspectives 2025 conference on the theme of ‘Community.’

We use ‘community’ a lot, positively, but often as mere rhetorical flourish. In my remarks, I explored why we value community and what virtues it embodies. I argued that if corporations are serious about caring about community, then abiding by its virtues–interdependence, mutuality, solidarity, collective wellbeing, and egalitarianism–must be part of everyday practices and not just peripheral and relegated to occasional volunteer or charitable activities.

More generally, all of us as members of society have the right to ask of business: how do workplace rules and regulations contribute to or harm the pursuit of the virtue of egalitarianism, in which people are recognized as human equals? To what extent do the wages workers are paid recognize their contributions to creating the results which can only be created by their collective labor? Does a corporation have space for workers to have voice in decisions that shape their collective wellbeing? Do what corporations produce by way of goods, services, technologies, ideas, information contribute to or harm the possibilities of cultivating solidarity and egalitarianism among people? Do firms relate to society in ways that recognize the importance of mutual obligations among social actors, including those of contributing to the commons through paying taxes?

Full text of speech here