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This is the disturbing thing about corporations, profit is their moral compass. It takes people with power in the corporate structure to contradict that defaul

This is the disturbing thing about corporations, profit is their moral compass. It takes people with power in the corporate structure to contradict that default.

dantheman 10y ago
No this is the thing about anything involving people, as soon as you have a group -- the moral . Governments have done horrible things. Researchers have done horrible things. Religious Groups have done horrible things. NonProfits have done horrible things. It's not about profits.
- damptowel 10y ago
  It's about motivations, or, in bad cases, necessity. About necessities (like not going bankrupt, or feeding a hungry tribe by claiming the land of your neighbor, etc) I'm not sure much can be done. But I do think it's about profits when it comes to corporations. Shareholders are often relatively passive and in it for the money, they aren't "mission driven" (being the best at one thing in your industry, spearheading a new way of transportation, etc). Their field or artisanship isn't their motivation, the profit is. When you're designing a new engine, you might decide to use 10% more expensive parts to make it 20% more fuel efficient, but this additional cost might result in 10% lower sales, so the board decides against it since exhaust is just an externality. If those people were considered with ecology they might consider a lower rate of profit but instead take pride in the fact that they're helping humanity combat global warming while maintaining the standard of living. It's easier to rationalize away "bad things" when making money is at the top of your value scale. I think it resembles the individualism of our age, people used to be more aware that they were a cog in the machinery of history, no one thinks like that anymore, it's all "be the best you can be" rather than "be the best we can be".
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > It's easier to rationalize away "bad things" when making money is at the top of your value scale. I agree. The purist free market ideology, for lack of a better term (or maybe Objectivism?), is a convenient justification for not dealing with difficult issues. 'The ideology says I can/should only care about money, so I don't need to worry about all that.' If only life were so simple that we could rely on an ideology.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
imtringued 10y ago
Making profit is a good moral compass than not having any. This way corporations only care about how they can make money with the data. They don't care about the data itself which means it's only going to be used for things such as advertising or optimizing the user experience to increase profits. If they can't make money with spying on you then they won't spy at all. A government might not have a moral compass at all. They may start mass surveillance with good intentions like fighting terrorism but when should they stop? Since they have already invested into mass surveillance why stop at terrorism? Why not use it to fight crime in general? Why not use it to enforce every law imaginable? Since we now have data ranging back several years into the past why not use it retroactively enfore laws?

This is the disturbing thing about corporations, profit is their moral compass. It takes people with power in the corporate structure to contradict that default.

dantheman 10y ago

No this is the thing about anything involving people, as soon as you have a group -- the moral . Governments have done horrible things. Researchers have done horrible things. Religious Groups have done horrible things. NonProfits have done horrible things. It's not about profits.

damptowel 10y ago
It's about motivations, or, in bad cases, necessity. About necessities (like not going bankrupt, or feeding a hungry tribe by claiming the land of your neighbor, etc) I'm not sure much can be done. But I do think it's about profits when it comes to corporations. Shareholders are often relatively passive and in it for the money, they aren't "mission driven" (being the best at one thing in your industry, spearheading a new way of transportation, etc). Their field or artisanship isn't their motivation, the profit is. When you're designing a new engine, you might decide to use 10% more expensive parts to make it 20% more fuel efficient, but this additional cost might result in 10% lower sales, so the board decides against it since exhaust is just an externality. If those people were considered with ecology they might consider a lower rate of profit but instead take pride in the fact that they're helping humanity combat global warming while maintaining the standard of living. It's easier to rationalize away "bad things" when making money is at the top of your value scale. I think it resembles the individualism of our age, people used to be more aware that they were a cog in the machinery of history, no one thinks like that anymore, it's all "be the best you can be" rather than "be the best we can be".
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- hackuser 10y ago
  > It's easier to rationalize away "bad things" when making money is at the top of your value scale. I agree. The purist free market ideology, for lack of a better term (or maybe Objectivism?), is a convenient justification for not dealing with difficult issues. 'The ideology says I can/should only care about money, so I don't need to worry about all that.' If only life were so simple that we could rely on an ideology.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

imtringued 10y ago

Making profit is a good moral compass than not having any. This way corporations only care about how they can make money with the data. They don't care about the data itself which means it's only going to be used for things such as advertising or optimizing the user experience to increase profits. If they can't make money with spying on you then they won't spy at all. A government might not have a moral compass at all. They may start mass surveillance with good intentions like fighting terrorism but when should they stop? Since they have already invested into mass surveillance why stop at terrorism? Why not use it to fight crime in general? Why not use it to enforce every law imaginable? Since we now have data ranging back several years into the past why not use it retroactively enfore laws?