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Nearly all major car companies are sabotaging EV transition, and Japan is worst, study finds (thedriven.io)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[–] 67 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Sabotaged, or just efficiently increasing shareholder value. It’s called “Fiduciary Responsibility”.

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  • [–] 61 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I am constantly baffled how refusing to futute-proof the company meets the definition of "fiduciary responsibility".

    "Let's spike today's profits by destroying tomorrow's profits" doesn't seem very responsible to me.

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  • [–] 35 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's because it's a prisoners dillema. If they do it and other companies don't, they are at a disadvantage. The only way to get proper behavior is to have the government force companies to behave.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Exactly... And ultimately they are beholden to shareholders. Which are largely in it for the stock price, not the dividends - they want numbers to go up, and they don't care if it crashes the company in a few years when they're no longer holding the bag

    Money today is worth more than money tomorrow. With enough data and analysis, riding companies into the ground is the optimal way to make money

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    The desires of private shareholders, which have exclusively become "give me more NOW!" are wholly incompatible with the long term needs of our species, such as homeostasis with our sole shared COMMUNal habitat. The private shareholders that dictate how our economy runs through their captured governments literally only care as far out as their next quarterly earnings/ego score report, the planet can explode beyond that as far as they're concerned, and my pet theory is that the wealth class is so egotistical, living like Pharoahs as others suffer and still needing mooaaaaaaar, that they kind of want the world to end after they're gone, as they were the only point of it ever existing from their perspective.

    Our species only pays lip service to the second, because many to most of us have been successfully propagandized to believe in the lie that we may one day be in the irresponsible sociopath hoarder con-man class, whether through lottery or not buying lattes, lol. And heaven forbid we kneecap the gluttonous, destructive lifestyle we delude ourselves we'll one day have with... barf... responsibilities towards the societies that facilitated such unethical levels of antisocial wealth hoarding to begin with. Punching down looks fun amirite?

    Basically the self-inflicted doom of our species that we're sleep walking towards can be boiled down to this meme:

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    the same reason that you're better off taking the lump sum vs the 30 year pay out if you win the lottery.

    money today that i can use today is worth more than money tomorrow.

    and money today that i invest now, will be worth a lot more than money tomorrow that i can't invest and get interest on

    it's not responsible in terms of my company lasting a long time... but it's responsible in terms of profit.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    the same reason that you’re better off taking the lump sum vs the 30 year pay out if you win the lottery.

    money today that i can use today is worth more than money tomorrow.

    You might be theoretically better off in an ideal outcome, but I'm pretty sure taking the 30 year payout is the generally recommended option. If I were to win the Mega Millions at the current level, I would need to make investments that paid $96,244,081 over 30 years just to equal the tax savings of taking the annuity versus the lump sum payment. That works out to a 3.1% return on the initial lump sum, every year, 30 years straight. Granted, this isn't exactly impossible, but it does require a few caveats. For example, this assumes you don't actually spend any of that money, investing 100% of it and never having a bad year. Of course, the average lotto winner is not exactly known for their great ability to invest their money. Meanwhile, there's nothing preventing the person taking the 30-year annuity from investing a portion of their annual payouts, which are guaranteed, while returns on investments are explicitly not guaranteed.

    A guaranteed $96,244,081 return is a better investment than a possible $200,000,000 that's continent on absolutely nothing going wrong for the next 30 years, but the sort of people who run companies seem to forget about this these days.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    money now is worth more than money later.

    because of inflation, and also because i can use it now. money i am getting in 30 years is no good to me now.

    this isn't that hard of a concept.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    When your justification is an uncertain investment, it isn't that hard of a concept to realize you're wrong. You're literally the only person I've ever seen advocating for the lump sum payment as the financialyl sound move when it quite nearly halves 100% sure income.

    Inflation is also much less of a concern when you're talking about literal millions of dollars, unless you're talking about the Zimbabwe national lotto. If you're living in a way that your ability to live with $15,000,000/year towards the end of a 30-year annuity payout has materially changed, you have bigger issues than inflation going on.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    No. So many people misunderstand that. No, it does not simply mean you automatically sacrifice longterm profits. Fiduciary responsibility is pretty widely open to interpretation because shareholders overall can want different things. Some stocks barely budge in price but the board gives good dividends. Some companies make no profit for years upon years because they are pushing for growth. Just chalking this up to fiduciary responsibility is misguided and misses many big reasons why many boards choose short term profits while sacrificing longterm sustainability. Many get most of their earnings in stock. As long as they can keep the share price up long enough for them to make bank, they have little care about the longterm health of the company. This is one of the reasons that stock buybacks have been so big over the last decade.

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