The whole Discord/NFT thing has me wondering about how far the feduciary duty to shareholders in a company goes.

like, are you obligated to do shady but not illegal things to make more money for shareholders if you're an executive of a company?

if the regulatory schema doesn't disallow some novel scam, does that mean you're now obligated to attempt to chase it if it can be predicted to make money?

You'd hope that responsible application of fiduciary duty would be to avoid novel scams even if they might be profitable because the risk of failure might be too dire, either financially or in public relations.

or the principle that such things are not "good" business

But that would also imply leadership and executives were not effectively brainwashed by the cult of profit optimization.

Yeah everything is short term profits now

And part of that is that many shareholders expect the impossible of constant and rapid growth for return on investment as an ideal because it's "optimal" for their portfolios

So thus the pressure to do that is there to optimize the return on investment

And really, good leadership needs to be able to say "no" to that sort of outlook.

But I'm of the older school opinion that fiduciary duty to your shareholders should be over a long term investment rather than every quarter, or even every year. Because not only do you have duty to your shareholders, you do also have responsibility for the people you employ too. Slower but more consistent YOY growth forms a better portfolio, tbh

If they do that they get sued

Corporations are people but legally they are bound to be sociopaths

I mean, I think there are circumstances where corporations can skip doing shit like NFTs and reasonably not be sued

Because what I'm talking about here is essentially skipping novel scams or "technically not illegal yet" activity not being a breach of responsibility to shareholders

I mean, we're generally in agreement that the system sets up corporations to be as you say, but in this specific context, I think there's room for a smarter leader to be within their right to say no as a way to protect the interests of shareholders in the long term.

But of course, in reality, we don't see that happen all the time because of the cult of profit optimization and the fact that corporate leadership disproportionately attracts actual, legitimate sociopaths

I think the argument against being required to jump on ridiculous bandwagons is that it's outside of your core competency and it's risky for the company to expose itself to a bunch of technical, legal, and regulatory issues it has no relevant expertise in

That one can fly for sure

Honestly I'm hoping nft and crypto mining falls apart quickly

I believe that's a hope we all share

the problem is that this particular bandwagon is one that isn't that hard to program, it's the financial side that's tricky, so every computer company seems to think they can jump on board

I hope the IRS fucking has a field day w this