Hacker News Reader

Comment by MaxfordAndSons | Hacker News Reader

There is no such legal obligation. That's a myth the oligarchs have spread to preclude people from even imagining socially responsible corporations.

Sure, you might get fired if you try to put social responsibility or even just long term sustainability of the company above quarterly earnings/growth if your board isn't on board with it. But you won't go to jail.

View on HN

This is actually true. The shareholder maximization value thesis can be traced to a single economics paper and was very controversial at the time as it broke from the obligations that companies were typically under to be responsible to uphold in exchange for limited liability protection. Most businesses were structured as partnerships or sole proprietary entires that didn't have limited liability for shareholders and had a broad obligation to shareholders, bondholders, employees and society

You don't need the legal obligation because that's just the way it is. You'd need a legal obligation to change it. The truth stands that typical corporations have only one goal, the maximization of that corporation's ambition which is almost always growth of revenue and profit. This is how it works, regardless of how you all continue arguing the unimportant details. It's almost as if you can keep the real problems hidden away by making a big scene about the meaningless.

That doesn't matter. The point is that legal obligation absolved of culpability. There is no such legal obligation whatsoever, and so there is culpability.

> The truth stands that typical corporations have only one goal

"Typical" is the key word here. The typical American of your age probably doomscrolls TikTok. Do you? Do you have a legal obligation to do so? Three completely different things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com