But Trump had actually said many of those things himself . Maybe try listening to what he has actually said beyond the 10 second sound bites the media shoves down your throat . <| sep |> M M M Good <| sep |> Ahhh Dodge v . Ford , good case but it doesn ' t mean what some people think it does . First , the Dodge brothers owned 10 % of ford . They gave Henry Ford their money and said here is our money , make us more . Henry Ford said , I am a great , magnanimous man , so I will use your money to prove what a fine example of the master race I am yeah , he was a bit of a Nazi and build the biggest factory in the world and lavish the little people with money . I hope you didn ' t want your money back . Now , he had great reasons to pay his workers well . Well paid workers take less sick days , stay with the company longer and work harder to keep their jobs . This was important because his workers needed a great deal of training , and also because if one part f the assembly line went down due to absenteeism , the whole line would go down . Th problem is that Ford didn ' t say any of this when he was on the stand . He just spouted out about what a great man he was . He said , I ' m not even trying to make money , I ' m just being great # winning . This s fine if it is your own money , but he was doing this with other people money . Not cool . So the default rule today is that it is the corporation must maximize the value of the corporation to the shareholder . But , the corporations a TON of leeway to decide what would benefit shareholders . Costco is a great example . They ' ve come under a lot of pressure to treat there employees worse . But they ' ve resister because well paid employees provide great customer service , show up every day , and don ' t steal stuff . So , they had an argument that well paid employees do maximize shareholder value . Hypothetically , chickfila could go public and stay closed on Sundays . Just say , our customers and best employees would abandon us if we opened on Sundays . And remember , the whole maximize shareholder value thing is just the default . I could make a corporation and say that I will donate 90 % of my profits to charity , whether r not t makes business sense . Then , with this info out there I can sell shares and ask people for their money . Maybe they ' ll give me their money , but for the most part people would probably prefer to donate some money to charity and invest some money in a corporation only out to get money . In the end , we have to stop and think what exactly is a corporation . It is a tool to raise money . People give you money to buy a part of your company . And while shareholders can vote on certain issues every so often , for the most part you can run the company as you please . In return for all this freedom , you promise to make dat money or at least to do whatever it is you said you ' d do when shareholders gave you their money . Now , I agree that companies can be too short sighted because of the pressure to make money in the short term , a problem that was exacerbated by the increased threat of hostile takeovers since the ' 80 s . But what it all boils down to is corporations are greedy because they are playing with other people ' s money .