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"A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the investors a fair return." A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the invest

by rsync 10y ago

"A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the investors a fair return." A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the investors their expected return that they were promised, within the bounds of the forward looking statements, etc., that the company put forth to receive the investment. There's no "fair" anywhere in there - nor should there be. "But profit alone isn't a sustaining motivation." That's true for me and it might be true for you but it isn't true for everyone, nor should it be. We should expect that there are many people and organizations for whom profit alone is a sustaining motivation - and we should take steps that we are not fragile to such actors.

wpietri 10y ago
> There's no "fair" anywhere in there - nor should there be. This is basically a moral claim. I think it's a sad sort of morality. That's irrelevant to that point, which is a practical one. Businesses generally have to give investors a return they feel is fair, or they stop getting investors. Investors are primates, and so have a sense of fairness. [1] The notion of a fair rate of return is also related to the market rate, and companies that fail to provide market-rate returns don't do well, no matter how precisely correct their forward-looking statements. As to profit being a sustaining motivation, feel free to give examples, but I find your raw assertions unpersuasive. I believe that it's necessarily true for organization in the long run, in that profit-seeking is a short-term motivation, one that essentially conflicts with the long-term work needed for sustainable companies. > we should take steps that we are not fragile to such actors. Sure, but that's true whether or not their exploitative behavior is in some sense sustainable. Indeed, we need to be most careful of the unsustainable ones; they're the most dangerous. [1] See, e.g., https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_mora...

by rsync 10y ago

wpietri 10y ago

> There's no "fair" anywhere in there - nor should there be. This is basically a moral claim. I think it's a sad sort of morality. That's irrelevant to that point, which is a practical one. Businesses generally have to give investors a return they feel is fair, or they stop getting investors. Investors are primates, and so have a sense of fairness. [1] The notion of a fair rate of return is also related to the market rate, and companies that fail to provide market-rate returns don't do well, no matter how precisely correct their forward-looking statements. As to profit being a sustaining motivation, feel free to give examples, but I find your raw assertions unpersuasive. I believe that it's necessarily true for organization in the long run, in that profit-seeking is a short-term motivation, one that essentially conflicts with the long-term work needed for sustainable companies. > we should take steps that we are not fragile to such actors. Sure, but that's true whether or not their exploitative behavior is in some sense sustainable. Indeed, we need to be most careful of the unsustainable ones; they're the most dangerous. [1] See, e.g., https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_mora...