I wish more companies would take the Craigstlist model. There are very few posts they charge for and it's enough to keep the company totally doing. Even when Backpage was around to compete with them, they still were able to do that one thing well and keep going.

The constant demand for growth is not a good thing. You can only sell so many eyePhones or Intel CPUs before people just would rather keep old things working longer or recycle or not consume things and save their money for travel/experiences.

Lots of companies have probably attempted to achieve Craigslist-levels of simplicity; we never hear about them because they have mostly ended up on the ash heap of failed businesses.

Craigslist won big early on because they took the personals and ads business away from broadsheet newspapers. That's pretty much it; they didn't try to go beyond that, and they're completely justified in not wanting to. Airbnb came in and pretty much took all of CL's short-term rentals business. CL is a small company and Craig Newsom (sp?) probably didn't even care.

He had the advantage of getting there first, and making a ton of money as a result. That is not the case today, so to expect newer companies to follow in CL's footsteps is unrealistic.

Stock market doesn’t work that way. You are legally required to grow, forever until the end of time (or your business). I think it’s one of the most toxic forces that leads to pollution, over-consolidation, etc.

As I understand it, corporations are not legally required to "grow, forever until the end of time", they are required to act in the interest of shareholders. Typically, that means returning value to shareholders of the company.

Growing the company is one way to achieve that. Other ways include paying out a share of the profit the company is making via a dividend or using share buybacks to reduce the number of outstanding shares.

There are plenty of examples of companies doing all of the above on various public exchanges. For example, utility companies often don't grow very much (if at all) but they do have consistent cash flow which they pay out as dividends.

Don’t utilities grow as we generally consume more and more resources?

In the Caden of dividends, wouldn’t they also need to increase over time to act in the best interest of shareholders?

> Don’t utilities grow as we generally consume more and more resources?

Yes, you are correct. Most utility companies do grow to some extent, just very slowly. You also have to compare the rate that they grow against other metrics like GDP. If a company is growing slower than GDP you could make an argument that they're actually shrinking.

> In the Caden of dividends, wouldn’t they also need to increase over time to act in the best interest of shareholders?

Yup. In theory, if a company does not grow sales at all then their dividend should be able to grow at the same rate as inflation. Most companies do grow sales to some extent and thus are able to grow their dividend more than inflation.

For example, Coca-Kola has grown their dividend on average 7.46% per year. AT&T on the other hand has only grown theirs 2.26% per year which is closer to inflation.

https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/KO/dividends/dividend-growth

https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/T/dividends/dividend-growth

There is no legal requirement to grow.

There is no "fiduciary duty", it's just unwitting HN folk pretending to be business savvy.

The first statement is true. The second sort of misses the point. "Fiduciary duty" isn't a moral obligation or a social norm, it's a darwinian thing.

Publicly traded companies are controlled by whoever wants to buy them. If a company has assets that could produce a profit of $N, but it's currently not doing so and only making $M (and its share price reflects the lower revenue), it will be in someone's interest to buy the company and rework its priorities so it makes them more money.

So... the grandparent was effectively right. Over time, all public entities will act to maximize profit.

What do you mean that doesn’t exist?

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

I was going to point out that you're missing (or intentionally ignoring) the very next piece in that debate series[1] linked at the bottom of your link, which takes the view that this requirement doesn't exist. But it's not a very good-quality piece, which is presumably a function of the article format (short-form debate aimed at unsophisticated readers).

The flipside of that is that I don't think your original linked piece makes much of a case at all either.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

“Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”

We aren’t talking about corporations, but rather publicly traded companies. As the previous article pointed out you do have an obligation to your shareholders, and that obligation is to somehow act in their best interest.

Certainly the stock market price goes down if you aren’t growing. And prices going down means you’re not doing right by your shareholders.

I’m happy to be wrong here (I hope it’s true) but whether law or not it seems to be an immutable force.

The stock price does not have to keep going up. Dividends and buybacks are another option based on cashflow which doesn't require growth.

And can they remain flat without impact stock performance?

Maximizing shareholder value is not the same thing as perpetual growth.

Where are you legally required to do that? What law is that?

I don’t think fiduciary duty is the right word for it. But there is some Supreme Court ruling (dodge bros. Vs Ford?) that seems to imply (or so people interpret) you need to make money for share holders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Fiduciary duty to shareholders

I don’t think that’s actually true. Your original statement. The duty is just to behave how a reasonable or prudent person would behave. I doubt there would be a lawsuit case against Craigslist that would win if Craigslist was a public company.