Would anything stop a technology company from shutting down in protest of government regulations?

Question

Suppose a government does something to annoy a company, what would stop the company from protesting the action by stopping the sales/providing their services? For example a hardware company such as Intel or AMD could stop CPU production completely or say that their sales are only for non-government use only. For a software company such as Google, they could disable their free search and maps services.

Answer 1

While the answer to the question would be NO, such an answer fails to explain why, although a company would be free to take such an action, the likelihood of a business actually doing so is extremely slight.

It would be fair to say that a business deciding to shut down rather than comply with government legislated regulations would be a case of 'Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.' Above any other consideration, the goal of any business is PROFIT. The one certain way to ensure that a company fails to earn any profit is to shut it down.

Of course, there can be instances in which government legislated regulations could make a business unprofitable, that is, unable to earn a profit, which would result in the business in question shutting down. But this is not a matter of a company choosing to shut down.