[OT] Microsoft filled patent applications for scoped and immutable types

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Mon, 2014-09-01 at 16:06 -0400, Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
[…]
> A corporation is *legally obligated* to put shareholder profit above all 

Actually not profit but value. Profit is clearly a factor but value is
more than just that.

> other concerns. Either they act like greedy f&#ks or they risk getting 
> the crap sued out of them. The problem is we've permitted, and promoted, 
> a system where companies are owned by people (shareholders) whose *sole* 
> interest in the company is purely financial.

Apart from some pension fund managers who have serious long term goals,
the problem can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of traders and
hedge funds. They have horizons of minutes or months rather than decades
and so have no concerns about long term viability just short term
profit. The obsession with quarterly returns and growth in such
timescales is all the proof needed of the problem.

Clearly the Internet and extremely fast information flow is a core
factor in the overall problem, which means software developers have some
of the culpability even though traders are the main agents of doom.

> The *real* role of businesses in a society is to provide worthwhile 
> goods and/or services. Revenue, and even profit, is ultimately just a 
> necessary means to that end. But stocks and incorporation flip this 
> around, to disastrous results.

'Fraid not. Given the rules of society we have put in place,
"worthwhile" is an irrelevance. The only metric is growth. Oh and the
other is profit. The corporates are actually doing nothing more that
that which we as a society in the "the west" have set them up to do.
Obviously the "we" isn't just the current generation, but it is everyone
in the last two centuries or so.

> [Steps down from soapbox...]

Don't, it's a good soapbox to shout from.

-- 
Russel.
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