This is a lie and isn’t true - it’s not a law and certainly not the best way to run a business.
The fact that this keeps being repeated as if it’s fact is a dangerous thing that distorts the public opinion and frames the conversation into something that may become true (and is certainly working that way) which would be horrible for capitalism.
3 links is enough - you are on the internet - use google for good.
Corporations are amoral. As non-human “people” they are neither moral, nor immoral. And just because public corporations don’t by law have maximize shareholder value doesn’t mean that in practice they don’t have to do just that if they want to get loans, funding and what not. Certainly, some corporations resist the siren call to extract value as quickly as possible (Costco comes to mind, which Wall St. annalists think should charge more (that is, do the opposite of what made it successful) and has resisted). Additionally, if you aren’t mining your customers to the maximum, your corporation may be seen as an undervalued mine of rich ore that can be raped and pillaged via a hostile takeover to extract resources.
The problem is primarily public corporations. In 'n Out Burger gets to move at its own pace. Publicly held corporations, less so.
Corporations are not people, even non-human ones. If you want to argue that they are legally then please point me to the fifth amendment protection they receive. To your point - it wouldn’t surprise me to see them become ‘people’ in full should we continue down the cray land road we are on.
The problem is primarily stock options, and the way they are taxed making it much cheaper to give as compensation than an actual salary. This gives exactly the wrong people (who have means) incentive to run the stock price up when they are able to sell. Remove stock options as a form of compensation and require that all incentives be paid as salary and you’d see boards limit executive pay to reasonable levels again, along with rational management of the company for long term health and growth instead of the short term step in a game of leapfrog that it is today.
Would make a good dark cyberpunk story. Might even have some potential; 20 years ago the same response would’ve fit a lot of things that are current news or even just accepted as normal now.
Expand civil forfeiture to cover this sort of crime. If executives are charged with fraud, seize their bonuses, severance, houses, helicopters, yachts, Bentleys, clothes… No need to wait for a trial that their lawyers could drag out for years.
Then let’s see how immune they are from consequences.
If it is a lie, then by definition it isn’t true. I would argue that it, perhaps, isn’t true, but isn’t a lie.
I won’t debate your point (though the articles don’t, quite, say what you imply they do), and withdraw that part of my post. I will note three things: one that the laws you quote do not demand maximized profits, but also don’t say a damn thing about ethics, two, that whatever laws say it is manifestly true that corporations do not obey them all the time, and three even if they aren’t legally obligated to act amorally and selfishly it is increasingly obvious that they absolutely do. All the time.
Fundamentally, a privately held company has whatever the mores the owner has. That which is repugnant to the owner is repugnant to the company modulo the inefficiencies of management, obviously. If the owner is an amoral bastard, then the company will be as well, and seeing as companies are lightly punished for infractions, it’s a great way to let your amoral bastardry flourish.
A publicly held company however, has no real ethical compass. Its owners are fragmented enough through the complex financial structures that lie behind stock ownership that their influence is diffused into nothing. The people running it are, despite their lofty status, employees of it and are beholden to the interests of the corporation. What’s moral for the corporation is determined, thus, by what’s good for the corporation. There’s no other moral code. A bit may be around initially as a sort of founder effect, but once that wanes, the natural rapaciousness of the truly self-centered sets in.
Countries act the same way, in fact, which is why they are so often party to atrocities few among their citizenry would truly approve of and this is with and explicit notion of morality baked in (the national myths, ideals, icons, and heroes i.e. whatever is meant by the ‘american way’ as distinct from ‘truth’ and ‘justice’).
Agree
Agree - albeit with the addition of - this is universally true
Agree
Here is the disagreement - a publicly held company is still run by a board of trustees - which are either the largest stockholders or the representations thereof. These people are entrusted to make sure the company is operating in good standing - and also for the hiring and firing of the CEO. The CEO in turn is the ‘owner’ of the company while in power - and yes while he/she does answer to the board he doesn’t do so in day to day matters - and such he/she is the moral compass of the company. Whoops - there is the problem.
https://www.cnet.com/news/great-news-engineers-arent-psychopaths-but-ceos-are/
If you want to know why companies continue to act like psychopaths… look at the top.
They can be sued by shareholders for making decisions that do not maximize shareholder returns though.
[quote=linked article]Honestly, I thought engineers would be somewhere near the top of the list. The ones I know are intense creatures, prone to excessive rational thought and irrational action.
They believe they can solve everything, yet don’t see that in their own lives, they have solved very little.[/quote]I have heard this so many times, mostly from extreme extroverts and marketing people like the writer of the article (who is at least a marketing consult for companies). I’m always so curious what they feel the targets of their disdain are lacking in their personal lives to say something like this. Do they not have a wide enough social circle? Is if that they have a stick up their ass? Do they get angry when you can’t provide any data, documentation, or reason behind aggressive sales predictions?
Completely off topic, but for any social awkwardness I may have it seems in worse graces to be called robotic or sociopathic casually even when played as a joke.
No. Civil forfeiture is evil, and is far more likely to be employed against you or me than some amoral corporation or obscenely rich CEO. It needs to be banned completely.
If they’re convicted, then go after their assets.
They can - but it would fail.
[quote]Under this legal regime, it is not malfeasance for boards or corporate
chiefs to make decisions that do not maximize shareholder value. Boards
are protected by the so-called “business judgment rule” from claims that
their decisions were the wrong ones. The business judgment rule
protects corporate decisions unless the plaintiffs can show a breach of
one of the two duties. In other words, unless there is a plausible story
the board’s decision was woefully uninformed or was tainted by self
interest, a shareholder challenge to a corporate decision will fail.[/quote]
This myth is another reason why this entire line of reasoning is so poisonous. Shareholders can sue - yes, however they must prove the decisions they are suing over are made in bad faith or with gross negligence. It’s not an easy standard.
Okay, I wasn’t 100% serious in my suggestion, although I’d enjoy seeing it happen, but the difference between defrauding your customers of hundreds of millions of dollars and being caught with a bag of weed deserves to be pointed out repeatedly.
I’m fine with that.
Yes. The article has no apparent point but to bash engineers. If we are looking for psychopaths, I’d bet on the sons of Mary over the sons of Martha any day.
At this point I’d be happy, at least for starters, with a public spanking.
Right on, let’s go!
Oh you mean for the bankers?
[quote=“Skeptic, post:12, topic:86613”]
Turning clerks into upsellers bugs the crap out of me, nowhere more than the Post Office, where clerks are required to try to get me to send my $0.47 first class letter for $23 as “Priority Mail Express”.[/quote]
That must be your local branch. The most any PO clerk has ever tried to upsell me was asking if I “want to buy any stamps today”.
I like my little, local family-owned bank.
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