this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
927 points (94.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43826 readers
861 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The law doesn't actually state you need screw over your customers and maximize profit. It says that executives have a fiduciary duty, which means they must act in the best interest of the shareholder, not themselves.
That does not mean they have to suck out every single dollar of profit. Executives have some leeway in this and can very easily explain that napkins lead to happier customers and longer term retention which means long term profits.
It's purely a short-term, wall street driven, behavior also driven by executive pay being also based in stock so they're incentivized to drive up the price over the next quarter so they can cash out.
Yeah sure, but then you could also say the same about a private business. The CEO works for the business owner, whether the owner is private or public stockholders.
But the reality is that publicly traded companies end up being far more greedy and profit driven than private businesses. In particular, the greedy private businesses tend to taget an IPO, while the more conscientious ones remain private.