5020

Yeah, not so the more More profit bit.

Still, society can dictate how much profit a corporation should be able to make.

5021

If corporations only exist to maximize profits, why do we / should we permit them to exist at all?

5022

I mostly am. Growth is what matters. Profits don’t mean anything anymore, because you’re just pandering to the stock market. If you make a billion dollars a year, but I make a ten million a year but my growth is better, I’m winning more than you are according to the stock market. Because the money people put in my shares gives better returns. Even if I go under in two years and you’ve been around since 1910, I still “won”.

But for non-traded, it’s more about actual profits.

5023

That’s completely wrong, though a common misconception. Corporations exist to maximize investor returns, and profits are a poor way to do that. Jacking up stock price is a much better bet. Look at all the tech startups that had dizzying stock valuations and happy investors without a trace of profits.

[EDIT] Doh, I got ninjad by @ShivaX posting about the same thing whilst I was composing my reply. Well played!

5024

Because that profit motive provides an efficiency incentive and drives them to efficiently produce goods and services. And then we buy them, and we want those things. And we work for those corporations, and they pay our salaries.

In order for your question to be meaningful, you need to propose an alternative, so we can compare the current system to whatever you think it should change into.

5025

Some corporations pay higher line-level wages than others. Some offer better benefits than others. They eschew more profit in exchange for pursuing some other values along with the profits they take.

I’m just saying that societies have more expectations of corporations than that they will simply maximize profits. We expect jobs, prosperity for all, good stewardship of the environment, good citizenship.

5026

Ninja’d by myself even.

But yeah, I get how it works for publicly traded companies.

That said, not all companies are publicly traded and for them profit matters quite a lot since odds are that’s the money they’re taking home at the end of the day. Not every corporation is Walmart. Most are Fred’s Lawncare, LLC or the like. Fred cares about profit. Growth is nice, but Fred probably cares more about being around in 5 years and having money in the bank.

5027

There are helluva of a lot more Four Season Landscaping oompanies in the US, than Four Season hotel chains. Employment wise it is ~40% large companies (>2500) , ~25% mid, and 35% small (<100 employees) . As a general rule, large companies are more profitable than smaller firms, (part of the reason they got big.)

The stock market, being forward-looking, values companies not on their current profits, but their likely future profits, which is why tech companies are valued so highly. Some of them will turn into the next Google, Amazon, Apple Snapchat, Facebook etc. But for the millions companies that will never go public current profits are what matters. You can’t by the rent on your store or the mortgage on your house with future profits.

5028

As a general rule, don’t follow someone into the bathroom while recording them.

5029

Yeah, as horrid as Sinema is, this is unacceptable. No justification.

5030

But we’re sharing the video??

5031

The video is more damaging to those people than it is to Sinema.

5032
5033

“Physically intimidated.” Yeah.

5034

I’m relatively sure that recording someone in the bathroom without their permission is illegal in most (all?) states–even if they’re a public official–and Sinema could sue the assess off these jokers, which is what they deserve.

5035

Also at least one of those people recording was a guy, who probably shouldn’t have been in the woman’s bathroom.

5036

Let’s not go there.

5037

“No pronouns.”

Yeah, that’s not happening. Even saying it makes you seem disingenuous and like you’re not taking this seriously to me.

5038

I’m still on the “please choose whichever pronoun that already exists in the language under discussion” camp, personally, not that it matters at all what I think. ‘No pronoun’ is pretty lulzy, probably even dumber than arbitrary-pronoun-set-that-nobody-but-you-and-your-close-friends-has-ever-used.

Of course I’ll almost certainly grit my teeth and go along with whatever the group I’m in does, because holy shit is it ever not worth fighting about, but fuck’s sake.

5039

I feel like you need to be a badass like Prince before you can just make up new symbols and crap to make people use to refer to you.