The World's Dumbest Idea: Maximizing Shareholder Value

[The Minsky Moment]

• Third, maximizing shareholder's value is a general concept that has nothing to do with a specific time horizon, short or long.  Nothing is implied there, only that you should seek to increase the shareholder's value, meaning you should refrain from chosing projects that don't generate enough value, i.e., project with a negative net present value (though it's not the only measure used to evaluate a project).  Wich kinda makes sense.  A corporation with no profits goes nowhere.
  

www.amazon.com

We had this discussion elsewhere.  Amazon's business is pretty cash generative.  It's not that the company isn't pursuing profits, it is just that in doing so it has a large appetite for more risky investments and is prepared to take a longer time horizon then others.  Similar to Google in that respect.

[MadImmortalMan]

Google's doing all kinds of wacky stuff and experimentation. They're running it like a VC firm.

[The Brain]

Hardly; the black pajamas got you confused.

[Berkut]

Point being that companies that are not pursuing profits right now are in fact going somewhere.

[MadImmortalMan]

Some local-but-national stuff.

Amazon.com warehouse employees hosed by Supreme Court
Retailer said to make workers undergo unpaid, 25-minute daily security screening.




Warehouse workers for Amazon.com can be forced to spend as much as 25 minutes off the clock to undergo security screenings at the end of their shift, the Supreme Court declared Monday.

The justices ruled [PDF] 9-0 against the workers at two Integrity Staffing Solutions warehouses in Nevada, locations where Amazon merchandise is shipped and processed. According to the class-action, workers at the Amazon contract facility claimed they were not paid for the nearly half-hour screening process in which they had to pass through metal detectors and remove their belts, wallets, keys and other metal objects.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake, and the decision bolsters employers such as Apple, too, legal filings in the case said. Amazon disputed the allegations and said the screening process took only 90 seconds.

Mark Thierman, an attorney for the workers, said the decision renders his clients "short-changed a half hour per day."

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that, for the workers to be paid for their time spent in the screening, the security check must be "an intrinsic element" of their duties.

The workers claimed they were entitled to backpay overtime and had won their claim in the lower courts, which found the security check was an integral facet of their work.

[Ed Anger]

Steal everything not nailed down.

[CountDeMoney]

"Waiting up to 25 minutes to go home off the clock" = "Other duties as assigned"

Yours in Christ,
The Management

[Ideologue]

But the point is, my blu-rays are cheaper.

[garbon]

"And you're done."

[MadImmortalMan]

I've hired people who worked in that distribution center before and they all said it was a highly unpleasant place to work. They like to hire kids fresh out of college who haven't worked anywhere else before and have nothing to compare it to for the professional roles. (So they don't realize it's a bad place to work.) And the warehouse workers, well you get the idea. This time of year they have sent buses to the homeless shelter on 4th St, to pick up homeless people to do day labor for them for dick pay. I don't know if they are doing it again this year but it's happened before.

I'm really surprised the USSC ruled unanimously. The labor law involved must be written badly and in such a way that they could not do anything.

[Ideologue]

"And you're done."

I was being sarcastic.

[Ed Anger]

I don't want the homeless handling my package!

[garbon]

"And you're done."

I was being sarcastic.

Why would I take issue with that as a genuine sentiment?

[Ideologue]

I dunno, I thought you were.  You do it all the time!

[garbon]

I dunno, I thought you were.  You do it all the time!

You appreciating capitalism and how it works for your advantage based on the suffering of others?