A company is the property of its shareholders. Like your house is your property. As long as you follow the law, you can do whatever you'd like with it - in that sense, it exists for your benefit. You have no obligation to buy new chairs for the plumber to take a break, or allow the house cleaner to have a coffee break.

I agree with the link you're providing though: I'm not saying management should have an ideology of "shareholder value" - it's circular. "Make money" is not substitute for having a vision for what you'll build & sell.

I don't think it's clear at all that Larry is pursuing a suboptimal growth strategy. Clearly other shareholders believe that too, as evidenced by strong demand for Google stock. I think Larry is doing what he'd like to do, considering he & Sergei are the largest shareholders. I do think in the long run his long-shot investments are really smart, since ad revenues will grow more slowly.

Most businessmen will say nice stuff like this to create employee buy-in.

Most capitalists in reality think the following:

If you take care of labor, they'll over time feel entitled to be taken care of, and demand more & more.

If you make customer success metrics a KPI that determines performance-based pay, well, then they'll care of the customer.

Everything needs to be balanced, and the pendulum is too far towards the capitalists at the moment.

Counterpoint #1: Delighting customers is what makes a business successful. MBA's obsessed with extracting that last 5% of profit is what leads to diminishing returns. Mandatory conversion of 'C' corporations to 'B' corporations would be a good start towards resolving this issue.

Counterpoint #2: Labor doesn't demand more and more if the market is truly balanced. (If they can't quit and go elsewhere to make more money, they tend to stay put). Yes, the unions overreached as well before 1980.

I suspect that this balance of power will change by one of many different ways.

1. Pitchforks and torches. The capitalists will be run out of town on a rail (or worse).

2. Business leaders realizing they overreached, go back to the way things were prior to 1980 when there was more balance in the workplace.

3. Business leaders attempt overthrow the current government to keep the Opulent Minority running things as they are now. (This was attempted in the Great Depression see the "Business Plot" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot for details) and it causes a violent revolution. See #1 and the French revolution to see how that works out.

4. Universal income is adopted and those which are unemployable have their basic food and shelter requirements met. Those who have real skills will be able to augment their income. The rest will subsist on basic income.

By the way I 100% agree pendulum is too far towards capitalists. I just want to disabuse folks of the illusion that companies will willingly swing the pendulum / have the best interest of the employee in mind. It's like asking the wolf to shepherd the sheep. The sheep first need to realize the wolf is a wolf.