By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 13/06/2026Google supports its coders' environmental/queer/antipoverty efforts because being the "don't be evil" company lets you hire in-demand workers who might otherwise go to work for Meta, and every engineer a Silicon Valley firm hires adds an average of $1m to the company's annual bottom line. 10/ 1380
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 13/06/2026Further: it would be absurd to hold managers to the "make as much money as possible" standard in a competitive market, because in that market, there will *always* be a company that comes in second. 11/ 2380
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 13/06/2026If "as much money as possible" is the standard and you're Chairman of the Board of the number two company, with $10b in profit, while the number one pulled in $11b, "as much money as possible" demands that you fire the C-suite immediately, since they objectively could have done 10% better. 12/ 2340
lonestarred.bsky.social @lonestarred.bsky.social · 13/06/2026Great points. An almost comical recent example of this Friedmanite logic in action is UCLA law professor and Trump donor Stephen Bainbridge's book The Profit Motive: Defending Shareholder Value Maximization: www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...books.google.comThe Profit MotiveWhat responsibility, if any, does a corporation have to society? How should corporations balance environmental, social, and governance factors? The Profit Motive addresses these questions of corporate... 051