[AinderS]

> Publicly traded companies only have one allegiance. Shareholders.

We have to either change this, or rely on a different kind of entity for economic activity. Because abandoning companies to be cannibalized by the financial class, or colonized from abroad, does not lead to prosperity.

[arghwhat]

Allegiance to shareholders does not mean that companies get cannibalized.

"Abandoning a company to be cannibalized" means stunting growth which is useless to greedy shareholders. If the shareholder was okay with not having growth they wouldn't be invested in the first place.

The main problem with allegiance to shareholders is the craving for financial growth at any cost, including deviation from the company's goals or disregard for users in profitable ways. A paper-clip maximizer.

[catchnear4321]

Allegiance to shareholders is also not created equally. Harming all shareholders is bad. Employees own shares in many cases, RSUs or otherwise.

But companies aren’t thinking about context. Money for shareholder means satisfied shareholder. The end.

Companies have to make sure most shareholders are happy. Or more accurately, that those holding the most shares are happy.

That won’t be employees. It won’t be individuals. It will be other companies.

Companies are allied with the companies that hold most of their shares.

But companies are basically people so companies basically care about people. Really companies just care about companies.

Save for the super elite, individuals aren’t on the radar. They get dividends incidentally.

This all becomes an even bigger mess because companies can’t keep other companies (and politicians) happy if people aren’t supporting the companies, through purchases.

But if the politicians can just provide a little support, by way of taxpayers…

[hakfoo]

I think it's less the problem of "shareholders" and more "short term shareholders."

If you're holding for 10 or 20 years, you may well be considering things like "If we spend a dollar in R&D today, we get back twenty later", but the guy who's bailing after the next earnings report wants that dollar on today's books. We do a questionable job serving tha long-term investor.

On a long enough term, most of the social-ethical-envrironmental investment strategies that are seen as niche can also be seen as prudent-- are you sacrificing the value of investors in 2050 by keeping a cavalier attitude on climate change today, or paying your contractors so poorly that they'll be unable to buy your future products?

We have the short/long term capital gains tax divide, but there's no reason we couldn't tax short term gains at a much higher rate than conventional income, explicitly to force people to demand long-term corporate perspective.