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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 8868480" data-attributes="member: 58197">Monopoly? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />But quite aside from [USER=86653]@overgeeked[/USER]'s excellent answer, the financial success of the shareholder does not require, and may even oppose, the long-term health of the company and its product. If Hasbro takes actions that juice its share price for a quarter, and I sell my shares during that quarter, I have profited even if those same actions harm the company a few years down the line*.From what I've seen, long-term success requires a mix of profit motive with the desire to do good work that produces genuine value. Without the first, you lose sight of the realities of the business world and go bust. Without the second, you end up parasitizing your own company until it shrivels.*In a world with perfect information and perfectly rational investors, this could never happen, since investors would see the long-term consequences and knock down the share price. Also in such a world, no one would ever invest in a Ponzi scheme. Since Ponzi schemes exist, we can conclude that we do not live in such a world.</blockquote>