I recently went down the rabbit hole of learning about stakeholder theory vs shareholder theory (aka the Friedman Doctrine). Shareholder primacy has been the no

I recently went down the rabbit hole of learning about stakeholder theory vs shareholder theory (aka the Friedman Doctrine). Shareholder primacy has been the norm for corporations for decades since the 70s and 80s after Milton Friedman published his essay in favor of it, which is worth reading and understanding: https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr... Essentially his argument boils down to this: stakeholders is a fuzzy undefined term, which allows the executives to use their imagination on who are the stakeholders and what do they really want since there's no voting process, unlike shareholder voting and concretely defined goals of maximizing value for shareholders. As a result, Friedman theorizes that executives essentially become central planners who allocate resources in a less optimal way than what free markets would be able to do. Thus it is argued that governments are better suited for this task rather than corporations.