the profit motive

[Advocate]

When Friedman said CEOs primary responsibility was to their shareholders, he was describing what is, not what should be. Businesses cannot be exempt from the "social contact" everyone else is held to if reciprocity and fairness are to have any place in society, and they're widely agreed to be foundational. Sadly, what IS is that the basic rules of a functioning and sustainable system are utterly denegrated in most of the ways they're most important. Regulatory Capture doesn't even scratch the surface of the problem.

[RCSaunders]

When Chomsky said CEOs primary responsibility was to their shareholders, he was describing what is, not what should be. Businesses cannot be exempt from the "social contact" everyone else is held to if reciprocity and fairness are to have any place in society, and they're widely agreed to be foundational. Sadly, what IS is that the basic rules of a functioning and sustainable system are utterly denegrated in most of the ways they're most important. Regulatory Capture doesn't even scratch the surface of the problem.

Any motive that does not have profit as its objective is evil. One either promotes and works for what is gain in value (profit), or one is working and promoting loss of value (death, disease, poverty, and destruction). Take our choice.

[Advocate]

[quote=RCSaunders post_id=472026 time=1600450652 user_id=16196]
[quote=Advocate post_id=472023 time=1600449392 user_id=15238]
When Chomsky said CEOs primary responsibility was to their shareholders, he was describing what is, not what should be. Businesses cannot be exempt from the "social contact" everyone else is held to if reciprocity and fairness are to have any place in society, and they're widely agreed to be foundational. Sadly, what IS is that the basic rules of a functioning and sustainable system are utterly denegrated in most of the ways they're most important. Regulatory Capture doesn't even scratch the surface of the problem.
[/quote]
Any motive that does not have profit as its objective is evil. One either promotes and works for what is gain in value (profit), or one is working and promoting loss of value (death, disease, poverty, and destruction). Take our choice.
[/quote]

Bullshit. Profit is not fair trading, it's taking advantage regardless of earned worth. The entire system now is one big bubble of imaginary value, imaginary problems, and imaginary solutions.

[FlashDangerpants]

When Chomsky said CEOs primary responsibility was to their shareholders, he was describing what is, not what should be. Businesses cannot be exempt from the "social contact" everyone else is held to if reciprocity and fairness are to have any place in society, and they're widely agreed to be foundational. Sadly, what IS is that the basic rules of a functioning and sustainable system are utterly denegrated in most of the ways they're most important. Regulatory Capture doesn't even scratch the surface of the problem.

That's the Friedman Directive named after Milton Friedman who came up with the idea. It's actually not really an 'is' as such, it's a normative theory of how an ideal company ought to be thought of, and should be structured, partly in response to the principal agent problem. The point is that the owners of the company should be responsible and take responsibility for directing it in terms of balancing social responsiblity etc, and the managers of said company should be implementing their directives. What actually happens is not that. Managers use an information inbalance to do a lot of stuff more for their own benefit than anybody else's. So that's the idea, the signatories to that social contract of yours are the owners not their employees, or so Friedman imagines (I just assume Chomsky does not).

Whether you actually side with Friedman is obviously another thing entirely, he was quite the red-tape slashing Laissez Faire capitalist warlord at heart. I think some of his actual recommendations are crazy. Saunders and Henry would totally approve of the ones I think are mad though.

Profit is a fine principle though, people should be encouraged to take inputs and add value to them, which is exactly what profit encourages us to do.

[Advocate]

>That's the Friedman Directive named after Milton Friedman who came up with the idea.

fixed

Why are you suddenly sounding reasonable? Where's the unnecessary vitriol and bullshit? Do you need me to buy you a coffee? What's your PayPal, pal?