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How is it moral for Amazon to shirk their fiduciary duty to shareholders for the sake of a political battle it isn't theirs to wage? I counter it would be more

How is it moral for Amazon to shirk their fiduciary duty to shareholders for the sake of a political battle it isn't theirs to wage? I counter it would be more immoral to put, say, the retirement funds of firefighters and teachers arty risk to achieve what is the responsibility of, say, the State Department?

tanderson92 9y ago
There is no fiduciary duty to shareholders of a public company. This is known as the shareholder value myth -- myth because it is false.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Yeah if this were the case the private jet market would crater.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Berkshire Hathaway could have never existed if it were actually a legal requirement. For decades they've constantly passed on doing things that could have easily juiced shareholder value, including hostile actions in regards to takeovers. It's why nearly all of their acquisitions come to them instead: an extraordinary reputation. Further, the fiduciary myth is silly as a premise upon any inspection: legally who gets to decide what's the one right ideal path for optimizing shareholder value, such that if you don't follow The One True Path then you're failing shareholders. Any other path than the single best one, would be inherently defined as failing the fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value (which is another way of saying: legally it's an impossible concept to implement; and logically it's stupid, it falls down instantly, no person could know the maximization path at all times). It doesn't pass even a minute of rational intellectual scrutiny.
    - tanderson92 9y ago
      Fiduciaries are allowed to differ in their advice and action taken in that role. I know what you're saying but it's a bit subtler than that.
stale2002 9y ago
I don't know, was it moral for IBM to work with the Nazis to build their concentration camp databases? (yes, this happened) I mean, that made the shareholders money, right?
- nasredin 9y ago
  They sold them mechanical calculators (?) IIRC. "Databases" is maybe not the right word? Not a historian.
  - computerfriend 9y ago
    It was their punchcard technology, which is more akin to databases than calculators.
andrepd 9y ago
To put it bluntly: fuck the shareholders. The question being asked shouldn't be "are the capital owners getting paid", but "is this company improving lives and delivering benefit". It's after all, what they're here for, not just to make money. No matter how much money I can make selling heroin, they're not gonna let me because, you guessed it, I'm doing damage by doing it.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  What about countless of other, not censored, services delivered from the same network? Do they not "improve lives" and "deliver benefit"? Collateral freedom is akin to placing your guerilla command center in a hospital, in a gamble that the other side will leave you alone instead of risking extra harm to innocent civilians. In this case, the hospital decided to disallow guerillas to use it as cover.
  - nasredin 9y ago
    This is either the worst possible example or the best. Russia BTW bombs civilian targets like hospitals and they killed their own bank sites when they tried to block Telegram recently.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Which teaches you about effectiveness of "collateral freedom" against states that Just Don't Care.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    In theory, in some case, it could be like that. In this case it's just like being in a city. They're not trying to take advantage of any particularly sensitive institution.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > They're not trying to take advantage of any particularly sensitive institution. They are. Amazon. And previously, Google. The worst-case consequence is not people losing access to Amazon store, but losing access to anything that's powered by Amazon cloud. People operating all kinds of services hosted on Amazon servers are the patients and hospital staff from my example.

tanderson92 9y ago

There is no fiduciary duty to shareholders of a public company. This is known as the shareholder value myth -- myth because it is false.

jessaustin 9y ago
Yeah if this were the case the private jet market would crater.
- adventured 9y ago
  Berkshire Hathaway could have never existed if it were actually a legal requirement. For decades they've constantly passed on doing things that could have easily juiced shareholder value, including hostile actions in regards to takeovers. It's why nearly all of their acquisitions come to them instead: an extraordinary reputation. Further, the fiduciary myth is silly as a premise upon any inspection: legally who gets to decide what's the one right ideal path for optimizing shareholder value, such that if you don't follow The One True Path then you're failing shareholders. Any other path than the single best one, would be inherently defined as failing the fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value (which is another way of saying: legally it's an impossible concept to implement; and logically it's stupid, it falls down instantly, no person could know the maximization path at all times). It doesn't pass even a minute of rational intellectual scrutiny.
  - tanderson92 9y ago
    Fiduciaries are allowed to differ in their advice and action taken in that role. I know what you're saying but it's a bit subtler than that.

stale2002 9y ago

I don't know, was it moral for IBM to work with the Nazis to build their concentration camp databases? (yes, this happened) I mean, that made the shareholders money, right?

nasredin 9y ago
They sold them mechanical calculators (?) IIRC. "Databases" is maybe not the right word? Not a historian.
- computerfriend 9y ago
  It was their punchcard technology, which is more akin to databases than calculators.

andrepd 9y ago

To put it bluntly: fuck the shareholders. The question being asked shouldn't be "are the capital owners getting paid", but "is this company improving lives and delivering benefit". It's after all, what they're here for, not just to make money. No matter how much money I can make selling heroin, they're not gonna let me because, you guessed it, I'm doing damage by doing it.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
What about countless of other, not censored, services delivered from the same network? Do they not "improve lives" and "deliver benefit"? Collateral freedom is akin to placing your guerilla command center in a hospital, in a gamble that the other side will leave you alone instead of risking extra harm to innocent civilians. In this case, the hospital decided to disallow guerillas to use it as cover.
- nasredin 9y ago
  This is either the worst possible example or the best. Russia BTW bombs civilian targets like hospitals and they killed their own bank sites when they tried to block Telegram recently.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Which teaches you about effectiveness of "collateral freedom" against states that Just Don't Care.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  In theory, in some case, it could be like that. In this case it's just like being in a city. They're not trying to take advantage of any particularly sensitive institution.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > They're not trying to take advantage of any particularly sensitive institution. They are. Amazon. And previously, Google. The worst-case consequence is not people losing access to Amazon store, but losing access to anything that's powered by Amazon cloud. People operating all kinds of services hosted on Amazon servers are the patients and hospital staff from my example.