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Comment by CrossVR | Hacker News Reader

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This is the most toxic of urban legends. Fiduciary duty to shareholders means acting in the interests of the company rather than your own. There is no duty to maximise profits against all morals.

See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty

You're absolutely right, but the line between acting in the interest of the company and acting to maximize profits is so thin it might as well not exist.

It can be in the company's interest to act for the good of society and a CEO can claim that it is his fudiciary duty to act in the interest of society.

But when society's interests are in direct conflict with the interests of the company you cannot expect a CEO to act in the interest of society.

Even if a CEO is perfectly within their rights to act against the interests of the company, it doesn't change the fact that investors might replace him if the CEO does so consistently.

Not even remotely true. This is an urban myth.

So the reason companies act against the interests of society is just a personal moral failing of the CEO and nothing else?

Its because they make more money, not because they have a fiduciary duty.

So you have a fudiciary duty to put the company's interest first and you have no legal duty to put the public interest first (as long as no crimes are being committed).

What do you expect to happen in such a system?

That that is exactly why [more] regulation is necessary!

Regulation is not done with the purpose of preventing companies from profits. It is done because companies cannot be expected to act in society’s best interest, so society has to make demands of companies, ie regulation.

> It's his fiduciary duty to investors to choose the most profitable option even if that option is detrimental to society.

Do you realize how insane this sounds?

I do, but that's the unfortunate reality we find ourselves in. It's why you should never trust a publicly traded company that promises to self-regulate, it is impossible for them to do so.

If a CEO consistently passes up large profits to protect society then investors will attempt to put a new CEO in charge.

It does, but without regulatory oversight— this is how capitalism works.

Without regulatory oversight, capitalism doesn't exist. In fact, cannot.

Without regulatory oversight, what evolves[1] is exactly what we have now.

1. At least in our case. And China in its case, and Europe in theirs, and Russia in Russia’s.

Yeah, well, that's incredibly accurate. :)

What I mean is: the current standard is the result of anarchy.

We had anarchy, people decide they could do better, iterated, and came up with this.

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