> A corporation's fiduciary duty is to its shareholders, not to its customers

This is a myth.

Firstly, corporations don't have fiduciary duties. Corporate officers, directors, and employees who act on behalf of the corporation, have fiduciary duties.

And those duties (in the US, as far as I understand it) amount to putting the company's interests above their own and making responsible, informed decisions. That doesn't mean always putting the interests of the shareholders before the customers. Its a judgement left to the people acting on behalf of the corporation - as long as they can show that their decisions are reasonable and not made out of self-interest.

Edit to add: This is also the basis for Corporate [Social | Environmental] Responsibility. People with fiduciary duties can reasonably decide that it is in the interest of a corporation for it to behave in certain ways within some wider context, even when that behaviour is not directly profit- or advantage-seeking.

"Fiduciary Duty Pile-On Thread" is always a good square to score in HN Bingo. Now I just need a guidelines reminder to complete this row...

Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness is always an option:

> "There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways', till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit."

This is obvious nonsense. If the ‘fiduciary duty’ were as strong as modern urban legend suggests, it would imply that all companies need to abandon their customary businesses and do the most profitable thing at all times.

Lemon prices down this week? Quick! Stop manufacturing spoons! Buy lemon farms!

That’s obviously not true in the short or the long terms.

Yet, Costco still sells $1.50 hotdogs and drinks. Just because you have a duty to shareholders doesn't mean you have to run your business into the ground seeking quarter over quarter profits.

They don't do this as charity, though: they do this because customer disgust with being nickle and dimed over a hotdog, and thereby the resultant lost sales from their actual warehouse, will do more harm to shareholder profits than they would gain back on selling more expensive hot dogs (and maybe, just maybe, the hotdogs were always a loss leader anyway, to make the trip to Costco to buy hundreds of dollars of groceries more enjoyable to begin with).

They also change things, I notice they don't have the polish sausage anymore, the dog buns are different, etc.

Hotdogs and drinks are probably a loss leader for Costco. What Apple product would you suggest they sell below cost as an enticement to people to make other Apple purchases?

Most of the Apple subscription services (Music, iCloud, etc) would be a perfect choice there.