Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm afraid that's where we fundamentally disagree. I've said it before and I'll say it again: a company's legal obligation is to obey the law and act in the best interests of its shareholders. Generally speaking, that means maximising its profits. There's no pretence involved: that is the company's legal duty and its sole reason for existing. A publisher is not in the business of selling books at the lowest possible price, but at the price that will generate maximum profit. There's nothing immoral or unethical about that - it's the reason for the publisher's existence.
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That is true for a publicly traded company, but then again, many of the publishers are privately held so the same rules don't necessarily apply. It really comes down to where they are incorporated and who actually owns them. To a great extent that is why we are seeing a lot of publicly held companies go private. There isn't a requirement to maximize profit, especially short term profit. Even with public companies, the fiduciary responsibility is to the health of the company, rather than to the purely to maximize profits or as the catch phrase goes "investor value".