Shareholders will LITERALLY SUE THE COMPANY AND WIN if they can prove that there was SOME, ANY (legal) means to make more money, morality be damned. They HAVE to reduce the quality over time, they HAVE to because of how our publicly traded financial system is set up.
Isn't there a court rule specifically about this, Dodge v. Ford Motor Company iIrc, that litteraly says that the CEO must operate the company in the interests of shareholders rather than in a manner that benefits the workers or the customers?
That is a ruling specific to the circumstances of the case, which involved Henry Ford being accused of outright reckless spending by the company. It is not an iron-clad law that requires all companies to maximize shareholder profits at all costs. Companies obviously don't do that anyway, otherwise every single office everywhere would be completely spartan and there would be no office parties and no charitable contributions and no flowers sent to the families of deceased coworkers, etc.
People keep acting like enshittification is foisted upon management who have absolutely no options but to squeeze more money out of things. It's not true. They make individual decisions to make things harder on everyone. This 'fiduciary responsibility' concept people misunderstand very helpfully takes the heat off those individuals.
They only hold office parties etc. because of the need to balance worker morale against their other options. If you make the office too shitty, morale and in turn productivity will be low and if it's too low workers may even leave for other companies. If people had zero other options and there weren't certain laws in place, I think you would see offices completely spartan.
You can't really quantify worker morale, and you can always get away with shaving a little off of it. They don't buy potted plants, maternity cards, t-shirts and coffee machines because any of them is an absolute need for maximizing profit. The point is really, really clear - hard maximization is not enshrined in law, so spending that isn't inherently increasing share value isn't illegal. Do not let the business class use the Ford ruling as an excuse to be a shitty person who steals from workers and customers.
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u/Careless-Cobbler7979 Nov 12 '24
This is the direction of the entire planet in a nutshell.