You and I agree that corporations are a huge problem and there is no one law that demands that corporations operate as profit machines.
There and tens of thousands of laws that indirectly create that, plus a few US Supreme Court decisions, for example: 1) Corporations are actual people, 2) Money = Free Speech.
So, what corporations have you worked for where quarterly profits were unimportant? By all means do name them. (non-profits don’t count) How many corporate boards have you been on?
My guess is you have not spent your life working in Fortune 500 companies and you’ve just googled to get your talking point.
Corporations as legal entities are currently doing easily as much harm as they are doing good, but there is no easy fix aside from changes to the US Constitution.
So you agree there is no law to maximise profits, which is the point I was making. "Fiduciary" responsibilities are about making informed, unbiased decisions that benefit the
corporation in general, not just the stockholders. Because those in power insist on using profits, dividends and stock buy-backs as indices of corporate health, the system is locked into short-termism that guarantees wealth and power inequality. There are other metrics of corporate health that should be considered: consumer satisfaction with services and products, worker safety and satisfaction, environmental impact, compliance with the law, and, yes, social justice. Otherwise, commercial interests in our society work toward short-term profits, fail to invest in R&D, corporate infrastructure and staff development, negatively impact workers' health and well-being, increase social inequalities, and damage the environment. Just what we need - major organisations working against the quality of life in our society...
The only fix that is required is to rid ourselves of the urban myth to maximise corporate profits/dividends/buy-backs at the expense of all other indicators of corporate health. Indeed some states are flirting with passing laws that allow companies to state explicitly how they measure their corporate health, with options not to include maximising profits as the sole yardstick. Anyway, I've said my piece.
(FWIW I work at a University in the UK but am a US citizen. My university is over 600 years old. That longevity is a true measure of organisational health, for most businesses fail within 10 years, and my university's success has been achieved without profit, dividends, or stocks. Perhaps instead of foisting paleolithic corporate models on universities, we should encourage corporations to adopt the collegial model - distributed power, goals that inspire staff and 'customers', promoting communities, using peer-review of performance, etc.).
