The structure of the joint-stock corporation is such that increases in capital and control are handed back, in direct proportion, to those who started with it. As a result, growth in capital is accompanied by growth in inequality. Over the last 50 years in America, the share of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the population has shrunk from 33% to 21%.
A wider economic effect of this concentration of capital is increased speculation. This causes more pronounced booms and busts and therefore the severity of market crashes has grown in recent decades. After the 2008 crash, the average American household lost a third of its net worth.
Furthermore, the gearing towards shareholder returns does not take into account wider social issues such as overconsumption and pollution. This increases the risk of perpetual environmental degradation. Without intervention, the profit motive would direct us to use the earth's resources to our extinction.
When set against the backdrop of global poverty 200 years ago, increasing income inequality, destructive boom and bust cycles and environmental degradation would have seemed irrelevant. Ironically, thanks to the significant progress joint-stock companies have enabled us to make, these problems are stark, relevant and real. However, we are not the first to see them. Over this period of capitalist expansion, generations have been aware of the same issues and attempted to solve them: