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Larry Ellison is a particularly greedy bastard. You could make a James Bond movie with him as the villain and nobody would notice. He owns an island in Hawaii

Larry Ellison is a particularly greedy bastard. You could make a James Bond movie with him as the villain and nobody would notice. He owns an island in Hawaii where the locals work for him as de facto serfs. He has donated to two charities in his life: one to Stanford in exchange for not admitting fault in an options backdating scandal, and one to set up a charitable foundation to research ways to extend his own life. The mission statements and internal marching orders at Oracle and his various other companies is "make lots of money for Larry". Nothing else matters, they will screw the users, screw the customers, screw the product, screw the employees, screw the open source community, screw the legal system, as long as there's revenue for Larry, the bosses are happy bacause that's all that the company exists for.

tjpnz 7y ago
For a second I thought you were describing Gavin Belson from Silicon Valley - turns out the character is based on Ellison.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
throwaway2048 7y ago
The movie version of Tony stark/Iron Man is pretty much explicitly based on Larry Ellison because they wanted to make a super hero out of one of the least likeable people possible.
bscphil 7y ago
Or, as the classic Bryan Cantrill line goes, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc
goatinaboat 7y ago
Hence the saying One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison
a_imho 7y ago
What else should for profit companies exist for?
- t-writescode 7y ago
  For profit companies should exist for whatever they want to exist for, as long as they can stay alive. Public companies, on the other hand, apparently have a legal obligation to make as much money as possible, a feature I find despicable.
  - a_imho 7y ago
    Right. Is it more despicable if some are upfront about it? Do we need to entertain the idea companies are our friends?
  - chalst 7y ago
    The idea that company directors have a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value is mostly a myth: it is one of those ideas that many economists like that seem to simplify things but actually can't be made to work. James Kwak has a nice article (Medium, sorry) on this https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiduciary-duty-to-maximize-profits-939ae50d0572 https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiducia... > The specific fiduciary duties of corporate directors...are common law: legal principles that have been established by courts in the process of adjudicating cases over the years. As it turns out, in Delaware, which is the state that matters—not only because most large corporations are incorporated there, but because courts in other states tend to look to Delaware law when dealing with new issues of corporate law—there are exactly two fiduciary duties: the duty of loyalty and the duty of care. > They duty of care is basically the duty to pay attention to your job: in essence, to make decisions on the basis of reasonably adequate information. There is an academic controversy—fueled by careless uses of language by the courts—about whether the standard of conduct is negligence or gross negligence. But the point here is that the duty of care isn’t a duty to do any particular thing, such as maximize profits. > The duty of loyalty is marginally more complicated. This duty (like the duty of care) existed in agency law—the law governing the relationship between agents, such as employees, and principals, such as companies—before corporations became widespread in the nineteenth century. There, the duty of loyalty essentially meant that you couldn’t use your position as an agent to make a personal profit—by stealing directly from the principal, via a transaction with the principal, or, in the famous case of Reading v. Regem, by using your British Army uniform to help smugglers during your off hours.

tjpnz 7y ago

For a second I thought you were describing Gavin Belson from Silicon Valley - turns out the character is based on Ellison.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

throwaway2048 7y ago

The movie version of Tony stark/Iron Man is pretty much explicitly based on Larry Ellison because they wanted to make a super hero out of one of the least likeable people possible.

bscphil 7y ago

Or, as the classic Bryan Cantrill line goes, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

goatinaboat 7y ago

Hence the saying One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison

a_imho 7y ago

What else should for profit companies exist for?

t-writescode 7y ago
For profit companies should exist for whatever they want to exist for, as long as they can stay alive. Public companies, on the other hand, apparently have a legal obligation to make as much money as possible, a feature I find despicable.
- a_imho 7y ago
  Right. Is it more despicable if some are upfront about it? Do we need to entertain the idea companies are our friends?
- chalst 7y ago
  The idea that company directors have a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value is mostly a myth: it is one of those ideas that many economists like that seem to simplify things but actually can't be made to work. James Kwak has a nice article (Medium, sorry) on this https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiduciary-duty-to-maximize-profits-939ae50d0572 https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiducia... > The specific fiduciary duties of corporate directors...are common law: legal principles that have been established by courts in the process of adjudicating cases over the years. As it turns out, in Delaware, which is the state that matters—not only because most large corporations are incorporated there, but because courts in other states tend to look to Delaware law when dealing with new issues of corporate law—there are exactly two fiduciary duties: the duty of loyalty and the duty of care. > They duty of care is basically the duty to pay attention to your job: in essence, to make decisions on the basis of reasonably adequate information. There is an academic controversy—fueled by careless uses of language by the courts—about whether the standard of conduct is negligence or gross negligence. But the point here is that the duty of care isn’t a duty to do any particular thing, such as maximize profits. > The duty of loyalty is marginally more complicated. This duty (like the duty of care) existed in agency law—the law governing the relationship between agents, such as employees, and principals, such as companies—before corporations became widespread in the nineteenth century. There, the duty of loyalty essentially meant that you couldn’t use your position as an agent to make a personal profit—by stealing directly from the principal, via a transaction with the principal, or, in the famous case of Reading v. Regem, by using your British Army uniform to help smugglers during your off hours.