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1800TurdFerguson t1_j5zmfd3 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in IBM Cuts 3,900 Jobs In Latest Tech Layoffs by itsonlyeva

> What part of companies exist to make shareholders > money do you not understand.

We understand it, but I don’t think you do. It’s not an issue that companies exist to make shareholders money. It’s that they only exist to maximize shareholder value, emphasizing short-term profits over everything else…corporate citizenship, sustainability, and long-term growth. This is the dystopian Friedman-esque future financial deregulators wanted.

We substitute Wall Street as a stand-in for the broader public, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Wall Street is no more representative of the population at large than Friends was of 20/30-somethings in NYC. Wall Street is a collection of very wealthy individuals and institutions that exist solely to facilitate the mass transfer of wealth upward. It’s not Fred and Barbara in the suburbs who are constantly pushing to extract every dollar in value possible. It might be the financial institution that holds Fred and Barbara’s retirement funds, but they’d push Fred and Barbara out the door in a second if it meant an infinitesimal amount of increased value at that moment for this mutual and exchange-traded funds.

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[deleted] t1_j5zpm16 wrote

[deleted]

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1800TurdFerguson t1_j5zuqlz wrote

Delete your account. Go herd sheep in New Zealand or something. There’s nothing superfluous in what I wrote. I’m sorry that you can’t grasp that.

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folstar t1_j5zxaar wrote

I think they were making a valid point, albeit somewhat poorly and unnecessarily rude.

You said "It's not an issue that companies exist to make shareholders money"

Then followed with a list of things you wish companies would do that are not making shareholders money. You could put a million things on that list (where I think the "superfluorsly expanded on" comment originated) and it won't change that none of those are making shareholders money. Maybe those items sometimes align with making money, but that is unlikely allies at best.

If you really want those things, then it IS an issue that companies exist to make shareholders money.

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1800TurdFerguson t1_j6019hi wrote

I’m not sure whether your comment about being unnecessarily rude was directed at me or at vegdeg, but I think it’s high time we put Friedman’s thoughts on shareholder value in the same grave he inhabits. It’s an incredibly short-sighted and unsustainable ideal, and as an economic theory it’s been shown to be increasingly unworkable. The pendulum between regulation and deregulation has swung back and forth throughout American history, but never has corporate America been better positioned to halt the swing of the pendulum back into a more restrictive position. The American public is by and large unable to do anything to stop the incessant extraction of value from them by corporations and the financial markets.

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folstar t1_j603ztx wrote

>It’s an incredibly short-sighted and unsustainable ideal

RAmen, but that's how the system works.

Maybe in the 2060s we'll have a POTUS willing to take on the system who gets shot in the head for totally unrelated reasons.

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1800TurdFerguson t1_j63gjt9 wrote

Ramen is what I’m going to say at the end the next time I have to join a prayer. Thanks for that laugh.

I predict we’ll have AI’s of famous jurists duking it out on SCOTUS by the 2060. We’ll have Scalia and RBG going at it again, with Berger and Powell trying to build a consensus.

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Quote_Medium t1_j5zyoxu wrote

I would heard sheep in New Zealand in a heartbeat. Are you trying to insult the guy or wish him well?

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