Comment by jacquesm
Comment by jacquesm 3 days ago
The CEO could easily stop this.
Comment by jacquesm 3 days ago
The CEO could easily stop this.
Boards are not some sort of unelected shadow government that exists to depose leaders if they aren't squeezing enough blood from the stone. Appointing a new CEO is time consuming and carries enormous market ramifications that could backfire on shareholders if it goes wrong, putting their own board seats at risk. Stability and peaceful transitions of power benefit everybody in this prisoner's dillema. A new CEO will be shopped around to the public years before they actually take power so there aren't any surprises when they do.
The CEO willing to do something like that would never find themselves in that position. One becomes a CEO through a process that filters those kinds of people out and builds the remaining into willing participants.
This. The board and the shareholders are the ones with the real power.
This nonsense has been parroted so often by now there should be a name for it.
And I'll be happy to prove you wrong: there are many things that Apple could do but hasn't done yet that would make them money and yet nobody is suing them for that. For instance they could make the cut 35% or 50% and if they don't then shareholders would sue. But they won't.
I’m not sure we’re actually disagreeing. Boards are expected to maximize long-term shareholder value, not mechanically maximize short-term revenue at every opportunity. Sometimes that means pushing harder on extraction; other times it means holding back because of regulatory risk, developer backlash, or brand damage.
The claim isn’t that Apple must raise fees to 35% or be sued—clearly that’s not how fiduciary duty works. The claim is that, over time, dominant platforms tend to increase extraction once they’ve locked in users and developers. That pattern has been observed repeatedly, and it’s what people are pointing to when they talk about “enshittification.” Individual fee levels can vary, but the long-term direction for monopoly or duopoly platforms is fairly consistent.
And the board would replace them. It’s their fiduciary duty.