this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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It's almost like corporations are run by vacuous sociopathic immoral criminals, whose sole goal is the acquisition of wealth.
Regulations with teeth are a requirement for preventing corporate criminals from succeeding, and ensuring a level playing field, competition, and market success; otherwise the immoral and unethical have an inherent advantage, because crime pays and morality is expensive.
The scary thing here is that the pledges came out of shareholder activism. If the corporation will not do what the shareholders ask of it, then who is calling the shots?
We often hear that CEOs have no choice but to put profits ahead of morals because they are obliged to deliver profits to the shareholders. We can see here, that they're prepared to act against the wishes of the shareholders, so that excuse is clearly untrue.
i been sick of that "a ceo's only responsibility to shareholders" line. just like i been sick of people saying in america that corporations are legally required to maximize profits for the shareholders. this lets greedy oligarch fucks off the hook for their evils by portraying it as inevitable.
before reagan, one of the primary functions of government was holding greedy fucks accountable. reagan introduced alignment. from him on, government has been run by and for greedy oligarchs who just want to make themselves rich, everyone else, including the shareholders, be damned. our last chance to start reversing that process through elections was probably in 2000 when we didn't elect gore. we've been doomed ever since to someone like the next president.
we did elect gore, he didn't have the heart to fight for it
Mutual fund managers, especially of the big index funds at Vanguard, Blackrock, Schwab, Fidelity, etc. They get to vote all the shares of the working-class investors whose 401(k)s are invested in those funds, and I'm pretty sure they always vote for whatever management recommends as a matter of policy.
In other words, the thing that's supposed to be a check & balance against management fuckery... isn't.