Comment on Why are so many leaders in tech evil?
Fedditor385@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Their job is to maximize shareholder profit. That is their only and one true job as CEOs. If you want a CEO that is not evil, look for companies that are not public even though they could be.
sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Years ago, I was hanging out with a manager of finance and asking a few basic questions about finance. After a little while, i guess she got tired of the conversation because she handed me her old finance textbook.
Anyway, I was mostly interested in the foundational ideas of finance, not the details, so I went away and started reading the introduction. It turns out that the introduction was very short, no more than two pages. It was extremely well-written, simple, and to the point.
The foundational idea of modern finance, according to this standard textbook, is very simple and highly reductionist: the one and only goal of finance is to maximize shareholder value, and share prices are the ultimate way that goal is measured. I’ve never seen a whole discipline reduced to such stark and prosaic terms with absolutely no attempt to articulate ethics or justify it in relation to some wider public good.