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Comment by michaelmrose | Hacker News Reader

> sociopathy is the only way that businesses are allowed to conduct themselves.

It would be great if we could stop spreading this misunderstanding. Fiduciary duty is a duty not to deliberately destroy shareholder value. Basically you can't set it on fire or loot it. It is not and has never been a duty to do absolutely anything anyone can possibly conceive of that will enrich the shareholders. Leaders are free morally and legally free to consider intangible factors that bear on the long term health and viability of the company and indeed do so every day.

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So then they exploit workers and customers because they choose to rather than being forced to, which sorta makes it worse.

They do because they enrich themselves, but not because of any 'duty' whatsoever.

End result is you still have a society run by sociopaths then.

Ye but you dont need to make up excuses for why poor sociopaths have no choice.

Yep, definitely this.

> It is not and has never been a duty to do absolutely anything anyone can possibly conceive of that will enrich the shareholders.

This. Otherwise Apple and Disney would be forced to sell porn. But they don't because of their moral (one could argue prude) stance which makes less money for the investor.

Both companies target demographics that would oppose that.

Also the PR storm of such a reversal would significantly damage their stock prices. More importantly, stockholders suing either company to force them to reverse the policy would be an even bigger story.

It's not a fiduciary responsibility to make as much money as possible, it's to maximize value for shareholders which means stock price rivals revenue.

> PR storm of such a reversal would significantly damage their stock prices.

Like the PR storm from searching the customer's device for evidence of illegal material they could pass on to the police?

> stockholders suing either company

What would be the basis for the lawsuit, prudishness is not codified in law.

Correct. Actually, the directors and shareholders are both bound by the company constitution or charter, as well as the various agreements between them. None of these documents ever say “make money at any cost”, and I suspect this whole fiduciary duty nonsense was pushed down from Wall Street, who of course stand to profit from the concept.

You just got to look at a company like Boeing and how it changed over the years. The fiduciary duty of the directors didn’t change; but the directors certainly did.

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