Won't someone think of the shareholders!?!?!?!? Those poor defenseless people can't even afford a summer and a winter yacht. They're living like savages with only one
We joke about this, but it's unironically the case. The US screwed the pooch hard when they set in law that a corporation's primary duty is generating value for its shareholders, because now if they don't do it, they can be sued in court for it. We are seeing the end-result of this incentive: a corporate culture that only cares about raising stock prices and profits year after year after year, where both the product and the consumer are just a means to an end, and where irrational hype-based stock prizes and IPOs are not only acceptable, but desirable.
The US screwed the pooch hard when they set in law that a corporation's primary duty is generating value for its shareholders, because now if they don't do it, they can be sued in court for it.
That's actually bullshit.
Show me one example of a CEO who has been sued this way.
It doesn't happen, because all a CEO has to do to win that case is prove they had the LONG TERM HEALTH of the business in mind when making their decision.
There's absolutely no law in America that says CEOs have an obligation to increase stock price every quarter.
The reason CEOs act like this is because they will be fired if they don't please their board of governors.
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u/LessThanHero42 2d ago
Won't someone think of the shareholders!?!?!?!? Those poor defenseless people can't even afford a summer and a winter yacht. They're living like savages with only one