Microsoft Hatred FAQ 5141

If you voluntarily take on a job that includes obligations, and have the right to leave any time you want, you are not any sort of a slave.

Microsoft has no family, and doesn't have a self in this sense. Microsoft executives have obligations to family, but this should not affect their performance as executives, in which capacity their obligations are to their shareholders.

As for obligations to community, no, there is no such obligation. An executive who devoted his company to his community against his shareholders' wishes should be fired. The company exists as a vehicle to execute the desires of the shareholders. That's why they get to vote on who runs it.

That does not mean that acting to support the community can't be the shareholder's wishes or can't be in the bests interests of the shareholders, of course. But qua corporation, it's purely a vehicle to execute the shareholders' wishes.

Corporate executives also have an obligation to obey the law, of course. If, hypothetically, you had a company that had a majority of shareholders who wanted to break the law, an ethical executive would pretty much have to quit.

DS