• kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      I am constantly baffled how refusing to futute-proof the company meets the definition of “fiduciary responsibility”.

      “Let’s spike today’s profits by destroying tomorrow’s profits” doesn’t seem very responsible to me.

      • Jambalaya@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        It’s because it’s a prisoners dillema. If they do it and other companies don’t, they are at a disadvantage. The only way to get proper behavior is to have the government force companies to behave.

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          6 months ago

          Exactly… And ultimately they are beholden to shareholders. Which are largely in it for the stock price, not the dividends - they want numbers to go up, and they don’t care if it crashes the company in a few years when they’re no longer holding the bag

          Money today is worth more than money tomorrow. With enough data and analysis, riding companies into the ground is the optimal way to make money

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The desires of private shareholders, which have exclusively become “give me more NOW!” are wholly incompatible with the long term needs of our species, such as homeostasis with our sole shared COMMUNal habitat. The private shareholders that dictate how our economy runs through their captured governments literally only care as far out as their next quarterly earnings/ego score report, the planet can explode beyond that as far as they’re concerned, and my pet theory is that the wealth class is so egotistical, living like Pharoahs as others suffer and still needing mooaaaaaaar, that they kind of want the world to end after they’re gone, as they were the only point of it ever existing from their perspective.

        Our species only pays lip service to the second, because many to most of us have been successfully propagandized to believe in the lie that we may one day be in the irresponsible sociopath hoarder con-man class, whether through lottery or not buying lattes, lol. And heaven forbid we kneecap the gluttonous, destructive lifestyle we delude ourselves we’ll one day have with… barf… responsibilities towards the societies that facilitated such unethical levels of antisocial wealth hoarding to begin with. Punching down looks fun amirite?

        Basically the self-inflicted doom of our species that we’re sleep walking towards can be boiled down to this meme:

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      No. So many people misunderstand that. No, it does not simply mean you automatically sacrifice longterm profits. Fiduciary responsibility is pretty widely open to interpretation because shareholders overall can want different things. Some stocks barely budge in price but the board gives good dividends. Some companies make no profit for years upon years because they are pushing for growth. Just chalking this up to fiduciary responsibility is misguided and misses many big reasons why many boards choose short term profits while sacrificing longterm sustainability. Many get most of their earnings in stock. As long as they can keep the share price up long enough for them to make bank, they have little care about the longterm health of the company. This is one of the reasons that stock buybacks have been so big over the last decade.