Better funding for documentation
Better funding for documentation
Posted Nov 17, 2024 2:18 UTC (Sun) by milesrout (subscriber, #126894)In reply to: Better funding for documentation by khim
Parent article: Funding restored for man-page maintenance
This is a bit silly. The duties of directors to their shareholders have never been to maximise profit by "screwing" people or "profit above all else". This idea has been repeated a lot online in the last few years but is quite untrue. In practice, directors are given a lot of leeway to argue that their actions are beneficial to the company. For example, they can argue that what they are doing is worth it because it is good for the company's public image, or is an investment in future profits, or is good for recruitment/retention/morale of employees. This is obvious when you see how many companies do obviously unprofitable things like sponsoring public events, giving away scholarships, giving people pay rises and discretionary bonuses, etc.
Practically, the actions of directors are much more driven by what shareholders want than any legal duty on them to maximise profits. But most shareholders of large public companies are not activist shareholders. They are largely passive institutional investors that just want good return on their investments. The current "ESG" focus also means many of them are pushing for more focus on other factors like public image, diversity box ticking, environmental box ticking, etc. over pure short term profit seeking.
I take particular issue with your "very explicitly not what is morally correct". Nowhere in law does it require directors to disregard moral principles. Also, people differ widely on moral principles. Whose do you think they should take into account? To use a controversial example, many people took issue with GitHub providing services to the immigration enforcement agency (ICE) in the US, believing that ICE was bad. But a different group of people would have taken issue with them NOT working with them, believing that ICE was a force for good. So if you start getting into moral issues you can get into a real quagmire very easily and end up pissing everyone off. I would rather the companies I (indirectly) invest in just focused on what they are good at which is their core business.
Posted Nov 17, 2024 12:39 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
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And if you don't approve of that business, don't invest! :-)
This is where I, personally, think the massive growth of personal pensions, 401Ks etc, has done a lot of harm. It's funnelled huge amounts of money into faceless investment engines that are heavily profit driven.
I'm all for pension funds, but they should be far smaller and, certainly, if your personal pot is - let's say - over twice the average size, you should be obliged to invest in companies and specialist funds of your choice, not let your voice be anonymised by a faceless profit engine.
But this is getting into politics ... :-)
Cheers,
Posted Nov 17, 2024 16:44 UTC (Sun)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
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> I take particular issue with your "very explicitly not what is morally correct". Nowhere in law does it require directors to disregard moral principles
This is a bit of a tangent, but while this may be true in some literal technical sense it presumes that the people running a company, the managers, executives and board of directors are logical beings trying to make a financial profit, in fact companies are run by people who are primarily emotional beings and a vast number of companies are run to satisfy some emotional needs of the managers, executives and board of directors, so profit will be left behind to pursue goals of "screwing" people (customers, employees, competitors) more often than you'd think if you believed companies were motivated by some rational profit-seeking impulse.
If profit-seeking was the main impulse, companies would be run a lot more competently more often, is what I'm saying.
Better funding for documentation
Wol
Better funding for documentation