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Comment by chrisan | Hacker News Reader

It depends on the company and if they follow shareholder primacy.

Not really. The law is clear that the duty is to the company. I know "shareholder primacy" is a talking point around Milton Friedman's philosophy, but as contemporary tech companies demonstrate, it's a false argument. Almost all the major tech companies of the past 20+ years have focused on long-term growth, not short-term profits/returns to shareholders. Amazon doesn't record profits and ploughs all surpluses back into the company for long-term growth. Steve Jobs ignored profits/shareholder returns for many years in order to focus on long-term health/growth of Apple. Reputation/welfare issues for employees (and now "ESG", for better or worse) has been a huge issue that all the top companies have had to make a priority (though as this article demonstrates, there are areas where the issue of employee welfare/fairness has not been heeded).

There's plenty of scope for further discussion about these points, but the key point remains: shareholder primacy is not law and not the focus of company directors' fiduciary duty, regardless of what people claim in self-serving arguments from various points of the ideological spectrum.

still, "more growth for company" and "more money for shareholders" can look identical from the perspective of the public or even an employee of the company, where all they see is "your interests are not important".

Uncapped growth is just as evil as unfettered greed - both charge forth without a second thought to externalities, while motivated to externalize as many costs as possible. So we end up with boiling oceans and rampant homelessness, because those are all "not our problem".

Sure, but the issue of discussion is whether company directors are required/expected to serve the interests of shareholders at the exclusion of all other considerations.

They are not. They are expected to serve the interests of the company, as distinct from the interests of shareholders, and matters like employee welfare/satisfaction and company reputation relating to externalities are very relevant to the interests of the company.

That some companies ignore these matters is separate from the principle: it’s not inconsistent with capitalism for companies to care about issues other than profits and shareholder returns. Though it’s obviously related, company welfare is distinct from shareholder benefit.

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