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Comment by pfranz | Hacker News Reader

Any time this comes up, its good to bring up California's 2005 pilot program; ReadyReturn. "When the FTB launched the ReadyReturn website, Intuit sued and lobbied California legislators to kill the program."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile#ReadyReturn

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Yes! This podcast episode is an excellent primer on that story: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...

On what grounds did they sue? "You're hurting my profits"?

Of course, what else? It was just worded differently

I believe I once read the argument is that this would make people pay more in taxes, since presumably the government would seek to assess the highest liability if there's any ambiguity, and people would be less encouraged to find deduction/credit/etc. opportunities.

Can't speak for California law, but in NC, when a local municipality set up its own fiber network, they were sued by ... Time Warner Cable (IIRC) on the grounds that cities can't use public funds to 'compete' with private companies. To add insult to injury, they were mostly looking to manage their own fiber network to serve their citizens because TWC had said "no, we're not going to support your region, because it's not profitable". So... it's not profitable for a private company, and public orgs can't compete with private companies..... so... take a hike?

I guess this is a legislative problem that will never be solved for obvious reasons.

Yes, Intuit is a publicly traded company, they have fiduciary duty to do whatever is within their power to return their shareholders a profit, including suing the shit out of IRS for attempting to make their product obsolete.

Welcome to late stage capitalism.

How is what you described late stage capitalism as opposed to simply capitalism?

I think late-stage is usually used to imply that while many of these mechanics can be useful as a way to efficiently allocate capital in some earlier stages of capitalism where private companies are more distributed and act less like governments, that when they finally go to their eventual conclusion and companies meaningfully go toe to toe with the government (and even finish regulatory capture), it becomes pathological and harmful.

I'd say, more succinctly, that late-stage capitalism is when the maximizing of profit ceases to simply be a means to an end, and becomes an end in itself.

At least, that's more or less how I personally view it.

In the United States in the late 1800s, wealth was incredibly concentrated in a few families and as far as I can tell they ran the government. So it was late stage back then, would that make now post late stage?

On the other hand, I would think that late stage capitalism would be defined when there is regulation of greed to prevent predatory and monopolistic practices that reduce competition. Or maybe that should just be called sustainable capitalism?

Because "late-stage" is a buzzword nobody can define.

This is called 'crony capitalism'.

This "X company has a fiduciary duty to turn a profit to shareholders regardless of the consequence" thinking is not true but shockingly pervasive across HN recently.

Fiduciary duty responsibilities are about putting the interests of the company in front of personal interests, and are mostly designed to protect shareholders. In other words, not doing things like signing up for a product you don't need just because you happened to angel invest in the company and it would benefit your portfolio. There are other fiduciary responsibilities as well, but certainly none of them are "return as much money to shareholders, or else."

Regardless, if we want this world where the government has publicly funded tax software that just works and is easy (and I personally do), the right way to solve it is through public policy changes.

The corporate fiduciary duty to maximize profit is a discredited myth that unfortunately has been propagated for decades by persistent misinterpretation of bad case law (Dodge v. Ford), compounded by simple inertia, ignorance, and (I speculate) the partnership of unenlightened neoliberal ideology with the cynical short-term self-interest of wealthy corporate shareholders.

Corporate leaders are expected to act in the interests of shareholders, but their legal obligations are satisfied if they can argue that their business judgment supported their chosen direction. And business judgment can consider the long term, it can consider the value of a thriving society in general, it can consider much besides short-term maximization of profit. Fiduciary duty exists only to curb overtly abusive self-dealing.

For more on this, see The Shareholder Value Myth by Lynn Stout. She has written a gloss on it here [1]. Her seminal 2008 legal review article, "Why We Should Stop Teaching Dodge v. Ford" [2], is a delight to read and I highly recommend it.

[1] https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

[2] https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

What exactly is the difference between it being in their general interests to maximize profit besides where that interest conflicts with the law, and it being their legal duty to do so instead? Does it not result in the same thing? Companies break the law all the time in the interest of the profit motive.

It matters because there is one less rationalization for why we have to tolerate corporate leaders engaging in evil. It is their free choice, not a legal obligation, and that should affect how we think about them as moral agents in society.

Maybe it also helps them realize that they have a choice too, that they are not "just following orders" from the legal system.

I get it, but you do realize that Intuit does exist because taxes are so damn complicated in the US?

If taxes were simple, their predatory business model really would stop existing. There is no business justification in favor of Intuit to NOT sue the IRS if the IRS tries to make taxes simple.

Yes that is a frequent argument when governments look at building public goods.

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