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Comment by saalweachter | Hacker News Reader

Yes.

I'd prefer to just leave the post at that, but to make a bit more of a contribution to discussion, fiduciary duty is a myth invented sometime in the 70s or 80s. No one has ever been sued for not maximizing the profits of the company the run. A corporation doesn't have to be evil, even if being evil were more profitable than being good. They can just choose to be less profitable and no one cares.

Given the choice, I'd much rather live in a mildly competitive, mildly cooperative capitalism where companies compete on things like price and quality (and salary!) without trying to burn the crops and salt the fields of the competitors the way Apple is now.

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I wish your statement about fiduciary duty were true. It's not a recent concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company

“The Court held that a business corporation is organized primarily for the profit of the stockholders, as opposed to the community or its employees. The discretion of the directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to the reduction of profits or the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to benefit the public, making the profits of the stockholders incidental thereto.

Because this company was in business for profit, Ford could not turn it into a charity. This was compared to a spoilation of the company's assets. The court therefore upheld the order of the trial court requiring that directors declare an extra dividend of $39 million.”

The Wikipedia article notes that it's not considered 'current' law in the U.S., but this was decided in the early 20th century (~1920).

Clearly not current law in California, or Apple itself would have started to distribute its $100 billion cash hoard as dividends under Jobs, instead of just letting it pile up. (Tim Cook announced this spring that he'd be giving out half of the money in dividends and stock repurchases, but he wasn't under any legal pressure to do so.)

I absolutely agree with you, given the choice and the ideal world, I'd much rather live in a fair system where companies compete on the things that actually matter. Absolutely.

I just think we're fooling ourselves if we think that we can simply expect people to adhere to this with no tangible incentive, rather than build a system which has the desired result.

In other words, it's still the system that's broken. There are a lot of companies I'd like to boycott (and I certainly boycott and disagree with Apple's decision on this specific matter), but I don't blame the companies for trying to make money—regardless of "fiduciary duty" which is pretty irrelevant (I was just talking about the nature of companies to make money and dominate the market if possible; this would be true of any company, not necessarily just public companies with duty to shareholders).

This is a tough call, and I'm sure it was tough even for Apple's legal team. Is it worth tarnishing their image to attempt to hold a competitor from the market for another couple months? Looked at from a strictly logical standpoint, with profits enabling more technological developments and more production capacity, as well as more advertising and sales efforts, it just might be worth it.

You know that a whole team debated this and did dozens of calculations and eventually the call was made, but knowing Apple, this was no butt-hurt matter of principle. This was a market decision based on something they could do that would be beneficial for their company in the grand scheme of things.

Do I agree? Not really. I think the company's reputation is way more important than this injunction. But it's an exceedingly complex decision, based on many factors that I don't have information about, and they made a different decision. I honestly can't blame them for that.

It's easy to answer my question with a simple "yes." It hurts you. It doesn't feel right. Companies shouldn't be so impersonal. They should play nice. I know. We need to fix the system that allows despicable acts like this. But in the context, it makes perfect sense. "Blame" is not addressable here except to the system. (As is usually the case, but that's for another essay...)

I see what you are getting at, but you have got to remember that a company is a not a programmed, autonomous and unmanned robot which is doomed to follow the rules set by the market and the system, it is managed by real people who (I sincerely hope) have the ability to reason and to see the difference between right and wrong. Anyways, the decision to use the patent law this way was wrong on many levels. I'm sure Apple knew exactly what it was doing, so there's no need to blame the system, or the market.

> They can just choose to be less profitable and no one cares.

The shareholders might.

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