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Comment by deergomoo | Hacker News Reader

I've long been of the opinion that the public trading of companies is directly responsible for much of the social injustice we see in the West.

As soon as there's a fiduciary duty to maximise ROI, morals go out the window. If you as an officer resist, the collective of shareholders will replace you with someone who will make more money.

There's a dissolution of responsibility that comes with the distributed nature of shares. The owner of a private company probably feels a certain amount of responsibility for the welfare of their workers. I'd be willing to bet most Amazon shareholders don't.

It's probably a naive opinion to hold, and I'm not saying every Amazon shareholder is personally responsible for the warehouse workers that can't use the bathroom without fear of reprisal, but the system is rotten.

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There's no legal basis for the shareholders to insist on maximizing ROI: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

There's not a legal requirement, but generally people are investing because of the expected returns. That creates a competitive requirement, with people investing most in the most profitable companies. The pressure towards maximizing profit is systemic.

> As soon as there's a fiduciary duty to maximise ROI ...

Your premise is wrong.

As the U.S. Supreme Court recently stated, "modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so." ( BURWELL v. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC. )

And yet these corporations behave as if it is the law.

Its just amoral people justifying amoral actions in order to satisfy an unquenchable desire for wealth.

> If you as an officer resist, the collective of shareholders will replace you with someone who will make more money.

How? Shareholders are either to small to wield power, or big enough to be equivalent to a private owner. There are plenty of boring public companies that don't fight for 10+% share price growth every year.

They vote.

I have had the following thought: what if we institute a rule where any shareholder who exercises his right to vote must hold his stock for at least 2 years?

Can you really vote with public amazon shares?

Yes. Shareholder receive voting packets in the mail, or can exercise their votes online at their brokerage website.

But how many of the shares of any major company are owned by funds with other companies doing the voting for thousands or millions of investors?

Every single cent I have in the market is via index funds.

You can but to fix what problem exactly? There are downsides and unintended consequences for constraining liquidity. It isn't a free lunch, especially given that I'm not sure what the problem is.

>I've long been of the opinion that the public trading of companies is directly responsible for much of the social injustice we see in the West.

Based on what? And in contrast to what?

I suspect we differ in our fundamental ideological assumptions, especially if you subscribe or are friendly to Marxism - because I completely fail to connect Apple (or GE, or some publicly traded mid-size company) to any sort of 'social injustice'.

>As soon as there's a fiduciary duty to maximize ROI, morals go out the window.

No, they don't. Certainly, if you're a widget company, the focus is on making the best widgets within your constraints (and not solving homelessness) but that's as nefarious as a saying a carpenter doesn't have morals because he focuses on carpetry.

Regardless of who owns shares in a corporation, there will be a drive to efficiency, reduced cost and profit maximisation.

« Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. »

> If you as an officer resist, the collective of shareholders will replace you with someone who will make more money.

and eventually you're left with sociopaths running the show.

Eventually? Inevitably, and for many companies that is a reality today.

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