There is no law (in any jurisdiction, as far as I know) that states a corporation must relentlessly pursue profits. An owner is free to stay out of markets for moral or other reasons without any strategic or financial justification. The only thing stopping them would be other shareholders who disagree. Private, public, public-benefit, etc... doesn't matter.
This is going to sound condescending but I really don't mean it to be, I just couldn't think of a better way to phrase this:
Did you read the bottom half of the entry's summary or the entry itself? Specifically:
> In the 1950s and 1960s, states rejected Dodge repeatedly
> The general legal position today is that the business judgment that directors may exercise is expansive. Management decisions will not be challenged where one can point to any rational link to benefiting the corporation as a whole.
and quotes from a number of law journals:
> Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law.
> the rule of wealth maximization for shareholders is virtually impossible to enforce as a practical matter. The rule is aspirational, except in odd cases.
That is very interesting, thank you. I am not a lawyer so anything I say is amateur speculation, but it seems like that case rules mostly on Ford's ability to arbitrarily reduce profit to shareholders by reducing or removing dividends, not necessarily acting in the public interest. This goes back to what I said earlier about a corporation being free to act in the public interest as long as the shareholders don't mind, as then there is no injured party.
