[mattbuilds]

That is not a moral obligation, it is in fact the opposite. It is a lie that people tell themselves and the world to allow themselves to make immoral decisions for their own benefit.

I’m not saying running a company is easy and I know that many gray areas exist in the decision making. I do think companies can exist, profit, and be a net good for the world. However, we need to remove the notion that the duty to shareholder profits is a moral duty. It’s a cowards way out of having to make actual difficult choices. It’s one of those things that sounds great exactly because it allows you do horrible things with no responsibility. It creates a system where you offload the effort and weight of your decisions. As long as you’re are acting in the interest of shareholders, you are in the clear. That’s a dangerous concept and the opposite of morality.

[shoeb00m]

It is the fiduciary duty of the CEO to do what’s in the best interest of shareholders.

In a working system it should be the governments responsibility to limit what a company can do

[mattbuilds]

According to your logic, a CEO should attempt to destabilize and influence the government's responsibility so they can maximize shareholder value. And guess what, that is exactly what happens in reality. You can't just simplify reality into rules like this because it leads to people using those rules as an excuse to skirt responsibility and make actual difficult decisions.

[hgomersall]

In the best interest of the shareholders might reasonably interpreted as, say, not destroying the biosphere. Fiduciary duty is certainly not "maximise profits whatever the consequences".

[dazed_confused]

I would recommend reading about the Friedman Doctrine and the time period where it came about. It is only a theory and not necessarily a good one.

[heresie-dabord]

Unless Saint Friedman got his "doctrine" from some higher power, it's just the oligarchy's first commandment.

In the first line of GP's reference in Wikipedia:

"The Friedman doctrine, also called shareholder theory, is a normative theory of business ethics advanced by economist Milton Friedman that holds that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits."