> Yes and no. If you take shareholder money, you are required to operate in the interests of the shareholders. Nope: * https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06

> Yes and no. If you take shareholder money, you are required to operate in the interests of the shareholders. Nope: * https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v... Per the US Supreme Court: > […] modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not. * https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.ht... Or, at the very least, you have to ask which shareholders: > Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. "Shareholder value," for one thing, is a vague objective: No single “shareholder value” can exist, because different shareholders have different values. Some are long-term investors planning to hold stock for years or decades; others are short-term speculators. * https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... The focus on shareholders mostly took hold in the 1970s (coïncidentally when folks like Milton Friedman became more popular, and the 1980s (Reagan, Thatcher)): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine and so to claim it is self-evident when there is decades of history for other views, is at least not accurate: * https://www2.law.temple.edu/10q/purpose-corporation-brief-history/ https://www2.law.temple.edu/10q/purpose-corporation-brief-hi... And contrary to what many people think, the shareholders are not the owners of a company. * https://www.ippr.org/articles/who-owns-a-company https://www.ippr.org/articles/who-owns-a-company * https://hbr.org/2012/07/what-good-are-shareholders https://hbr.org/2012/07/what-good-are-shareholders * https://www.ft.com/content/7bd1b20a-879b-11e5-90de-f44762bf9896 https://www.ft.com/content/7bd1b20a-879b-11e5-90de-f44762bf9... * https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergeorgescu/2021/07/21/the-shareholders-are-not-the-owners-of-a-corporation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergeorgescu/2021/07/21/the-s... * https://queenslawclinics.ca/node/81 https://queenslawclinics.ca/node/81