Comment by Tade0
1 day ago
> make the product smaller for more money because there's no other way that the execs and shareholders get to jerk each other off this year.
That's an amusing image but the real reason they're doing it is that often those assets are used as collateral to acquire debt and cannot, under any circumstances, decrease in value.
It reached a point where it doesn't matter if the service is shitty or not rendered at all - as long as stock increases in value no one cares.
Milton Friedman argued that the sole purpose of a company is to serve its shareholders and lampooned the idea that business has any responsibility for, and I quote, "providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers."
That is very in character for him, but I guess he was referring to the case which originally established this idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.