• acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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    2 months ago

    The meme refers to the landmark Ford case where the shareholders successfully sued him to prevent the company from issuing a bonus to share profits to employees. This nefarious precedent turned corporations into the monsters they are today.

    Obligatory Ford was a POS that did some things right.

    • Shard@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Ford for all his flaws had plenty of revolutionary ideas that actually improved workers conditions. Even if he only did it to capture the workers and “lock them in”, it was much better than what any of the competitors were offering and it forced the competitors to improve their conditions to retain workers.

      The worst part of that ruling was that some of the minority shareholders were actually competitors and they used that money to start up their own competing factories.

      Just goes to show how focusing on the business long term is always in the shareholders interests and most of the time focusing on shareholders interests aren’t in the best interest of the shareholders themselves. Modern day short sellers being the most egregious example of this.