[nowherebeen]

> Shareholders don’t care about the reputation or quality of service of the company? That seems a stretch.

Not a stretch at all. Proven time and time again that shareholders focus on short term gains over long term.

When hired CEOs pay is tied to equity (i.e. shareholder) they make decisions based on how it affects the share price during their tenure, not after. GM after Jack Welch left is a good example.

Shareholders can sell their shares anytime. They care about the horse winning current race more than the next because they can bet on another horse next time. So they only care about the horse as long as they are betting for it.

[simonh]

Given the hundreds of thousands of listed companies you can find examples of anything, but there's nothing inevitable about companies being run purely for short term concerns. Not every company is run that way, shareholder theory or no. Plenty of listed companies are capable of extremely long term investments.

The drive for the short term is one possible strategy and outcome, that's all. In a competitive environment sometimes it even makes sense. Even when it doesn't the existence of failure modes in a system doesn't invalidate the entire system. All systems have failure modes, they need to be evaluated as a whole.