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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

The reality is "it's complicated". But the strongest form of this - that "companies must maximize profits over ALL over concerns NO MATTER WHAT" is basically a myth. See:

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

https://www.legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-co...

https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/archives/56/5/end-sharehol...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325023

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value

So yeah, "fiduciary duty" is a real thing, but that's not quite the same thing as saying that every single decision has to be focused on nothing but profit maximization.

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So you think making bad business decisions is holding up to fiduciary duty? You can't throw money at every problem that you'd like to solve, calling that malice is silly was the point I was trying to make.

> So you think making bad business decisions is holding up to fiduciary duty?

I didn't say anything remotely like that, so I'm going to assume you're not trying to have a good faith discussion here, and decline to participate any further. Have a nice day.

You're the one jumping all over what I said, I'm trying to explain what I said since you seem to have such a problem with it. Wow.

Paying staff to avoid distributing literal malware on your platform is not a bad business decision. And even if it was - yes, bad business decisions are within the scope of fiduciary duty. Have you ever seen someone successfully sued under this clause for making a bad business decision, in your life? Fiduciary duty is more like, you can't take the money and run or pay your nephew a $10,000,000 salary to play ping pong in the office. As long as you're not doing something clearly, intentionally harmful to the business and investors, you're clear.

They are paying people to do that. What I said was that hiring more probably won't happen in this economy.

Neglecting all other ethical duties beside profits is so close to malice it takes ...an, ah, expert, to tell you the differences and how important they are.

And this neglecting all duties besides profits thing is real, it is institutionalized by decisions of investors, by managers hired by investors, by regulators "captured" by investors and so-forth. It is the norm. But that doesn't it's a legal or ethical that a given manager or employee has, at least not currently.

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