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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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I mean, legally, that is the purpose of a for-profit company. From a policymaker's perspective it has wider purposes, but to the managers that's basically "not their job"
That is kind of my point exactly. The purpise of companies was not originally so. I is just a view heavily promoted by elites. Even the courts believe it now. Was not always so. Hence it does not always have to be so.
Yes, but what the alternative is isn't so clear cut. Every corporation thinking through the impacts of their decisions on every other person in the world is obviously unfair (even governments have trouble tracking stuff), and even if they could how do you make them? Benevolent leadership is, if you look across history, a myth.
How do you allow a CEO to work against their shareholders without basically legalising embezzlement? You can't write every possible scenario into your law, and shouldn't ever try. How do you get random shareholders to care about a social issue, and how do you assure whatever social issue they pick is a good one and not "putting down the gays"? You could tear up the whole market system and start fresh but I've yet to see that done in convincing detail.
The solutions aren't obvious. I do think they exist, but I'm trying to quit value judgements on the internet, so I won't write a manifesto here.
PS on the history bit you mentioned, it seems to me a corporation is just an overgrown street peddler, and street peddlers have always been looking to make a profit. The occasions they don't have been flukes.