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Your two sentences in this thread is hardly debunking anything. What is Amazon maximizing if not profit? It certainly is not employee share of revenue or employ
by suby 4y ago
Your two sentences in this thread is hardly debunking anything. What is Amazon maximizing if not profit? It certainly is not employee share of revenue or employee well being.
- macintux 4y agoThe point is that there’s no law that says companies must maximize profit at the expense of everything else. The fiduciary duty is to be responsible with shareholder’s money, not to maximize return on investment.
- verall 4y agoIt doesn't matter if it is the law or not if Amazon is made up of a large group of managers with competing interests that all boil to maximizing profit in order to meet their individual key goals. The GP said nothing about it being the law, simply that it is how Amazon, as a giant megacorporation, acts in practice.
- otikik 4y agoIt does matter because assuming it as a matter-of-fact prevents discussing or even conceiving alternatives. It prevents you from asking: What should the companies fiduciary duty be? (Perhaps respecting the law and not busting unions?)
- kelseyfrog 4y agoCorporations are allowed to exist to create a positive net good. ie: the social contract works so long as we can plausibly reason that they, you know, actually benefit people more than they harm. Maximizing profit is a lie told to children for reasons I won't get into, but when it displaces the social contract, the end result is a justification of all sorts of socially pathological behavior, this included.
- arrosenberg 4y agoEverything you just said stopped being true in the 70s and 80s. Yes, B-corps are a thing, but the laws as currently constructed encourage profit extraction above nearly everything else.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoThat would be true if people believed economists like Milton Friedman created reality instead of what was really much more mundane. Those who do so are attributing supernatural powers to a mere mortal.
- arrosenberg 4y agoIt is true, regardless of what you believe. There is a ton if empirical evidence for it. Having the patience to push and set legal precedent isn't a superpower. Not sure what your point is here.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI just don't base truth on what Milton Friedman supposedly says or what legal precedent is. There are much better epistemological firmaments than those on which to ground reality.
- pjmorris 4y agoCorporations have no fiduciary duty to produce a profit. Thinking that they do has been attributed to Milton Friedman's 1971 NY editorial [0], but some argue that the notion can't be pinned on him [1] It's more accurate to say that fiduciary responsibilities are to ensure the corporation doesn't violate the law and that the firm doesn't go out of business [2]. [0] 'The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits', Friedman [1] https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6540&context=law_lawreview https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders-Corporations/dp/1605098132 https://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders-C...