- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://derp.foo/post/317313
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
cross-posted from: https://derp.foo/post/317313
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
Bro are you dumb
I’m as cynical as anybody else and there was a time I also would have repeated it as well.
But… show me the law. Show me where it says this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_suit
I don’t know where you live so I can’t quote your local laws to you, but in this age of information you can Google terms and they will present relevant links. You should try it sometime.
Your phrasing was “legally beholden” which suggests to me that a law exists requiring directors and officers to choose the most profitable path. The wikipedia page you linked does not mention any such law. It describes a type of lawsuit that investors can bring against those running the company.
Perhaps they didn’t use the right words. Iirc the correct term is ‘fiduciary duty’. A publicly traded company has a fiduciary duty to create value for shareholders.
https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/legal/guidance/fiduciary-duties
Good find. I did some quick googling on this (so take it a grain of salt) and found the following:
I have not dug too deeply, but what little I’ve found says that the fiduciary must act in the best interests of the company and shareholders. As a cynic it is easy to interpret this to mean ‘make as much profit as possible’, which is kind of the point of investing. A look back at history sadly reenforces this.
But fiduciary duty doesn’t give one a free pass to break other laws like child labor or slavery. Yes many companies still do as evidenced by sweatshops around the world. But if one is acting in the best interests of the company, one should not be doing such things even though they are obviously profitable.
Agreed. But then, you and I aren’t CEOs… maybe it’s just a meme but I’m sure there was a study that found CEOs have a much greater proportion of psychopaths than the background rate. Maybe they just don’t consider ethical stuff the way we do!
They are only legally beholden to do what their shareholders collectively want. While it’s not necessarily just for profit, if the shareholders are only demanding more profits, that’s how the company will behave.