cd_et_toss

It hasn't been always true, historically, that for-profit companies seek only to enrich their shareholders at all cost.

https://www.boston.com/news/policy/2018/08/16/elizabeth-warr...

"Warren attributes those problems to a shift, which she says dates back to the 1980s, in the obligations of corporations — from balancing responsibilities to all their stakeholders — including both employees and stock owners — to prioritizing their financial return to shareholders only."

(That's not exactly responsive to your point on maximizing profit, but the body of work on this topic shows that when companies care about long-term return, and about employees and other stakeholders, they aren't solely focused on maximizing short-term profit over all else.)

Thanks for writing this so well. Without taking a stance on your post, let me also add: It is quite hard to have a fair discussion about this topic, because there is a significant amount of misinformation around.

China Daily (state-sponsored) pushes in the US a lot of pro-China-regime sentiment. (Right now on their web page there's a hagiography of Xi).

Epoch Times (Falun-Gong sponsored) appears to have gone all in for one party in the US, pushing daily misinformation and echoing lines from other countries attacking the West. My best guess at why Epoch Times has so much disinformation is because of feeling close to one group in the US due to christian identity, but I'm not fully sure.

A good article on state-sponsored influence operations, with an emphasis on China, is here: https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/contrasting-chinas-russias...