He had a legally enforceable mandate to maximize shareholder value. There’s some wiggle room in how that’s accomplished, but not as much as it seems from the outside.
That does make him, much as I hate to say it, a small cog.
He chose to take the role. He profited from it massively and did more to perpetuate it than any other single individual at the company.
If we were talking about a developer who was writing software for drone bombs wiping out families, yeah maybe that’s a cog. But still there would be no shortage of judgement on that choice of profession
It’s plainly obvious that insurance companies are not good faith actors working to help people. They lobbied for this system, they are the beneficiaries of it, and they are reaping what they’ve sown
[citation needed]
There is no legal basis for this:
* https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-t...
* https://evonomics.com/maximizing-shareholder-value-dumbest-i...
It is simply one view that just happened to become popular during the Reagan years and has continued on:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
And while we're at it, shareholders are not the owners of a corporation:
* https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/12/who-actually-own...
Hence we have laws - an eternal, never perfect project to find an agreed definition of justice.
Abandoning centuries of precedent of law happens in some places from time to time and they’re not places you’d live by choice.