I think it's less the problem of "shareholders" and more "short term shareholders." If you're holding for 10 or 20 years, you may well be considering things li

I think it's less the problem of "shareholders" and more "short term shareholders." If you're holding for 10 or 20 years, you may well be considering things like "If we spend a dollar in R&D today, we get back twenty later", but the guy who's bailing after the next earnings report wants that dollar on today's books. We do a questionable job serving tha long-term investor. On a long enough term, most of the social-ethical-envrironmental investment strategies that are seen as niche can also be seen as prudent-- are you sacrificing the value of investors in 2050 by keeping a cavalier attitude on climate change today, or paying your contractors so poorly that they'll be unable to buy your future products? We have the short/long term capital gains tax divide, but there's no reason we couldn't tax short term gains at a much higher rate than conventional income, explicitly to force people to demand long-term corporate perspective.