4 ms·

I fail to understand why someting that is totally reasonable to expect from any indevisual suddenly becomes "amazingly hard" when the indeviduals are grouped to

I fail to understand why someting that is totally reasonable to expect from any indevisual suddenly becomes "amazingly hard" when the indeviduals are grouped together.

mark_h 17y ago
Watch "The Corporation" if you get the chance (although it's 4 hours long). Essentially, corporations have the legal rights of a person, but none of the incentives to "be good". Their sole imperative is to maximise value for shareholders, leading to behaviour -- as characterised in the documentary -- that would be classified as sociopathic in an actual person.
- adrianwaj 17y ago
  I wonder if there were more and better fair trade organizations, then investors and customers would be more picky as to who to associate, and corporations comply as a result. Who'd bear the cost of compliance? How successful has corporate social responsibility actually been? Will it ever reach China?
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - shrughes 17y ago
    If large numbers of investors made decisions based on reasons other than profitability, other investors would buy more so-called "evil" companies' stock until the prices are back to what they would have been.
    - adrianwaj 17y ago
      Got it. Evil companies will exist so long as there are evil customers and evil investors who associate. As such, evil would have to be legislated out of existence if it can't be shamed: both of which impossible. btw, how do you know that you're evil? does the evilness change? how so?
    - nostrademons 17y ago
      That's not necessarily true. Investor psychology shifts the demand curve for the company's stock - if large numbers of investors made decisions based on reasons other than profitability, then they'd demand more shares of "good" companies and fewer shares of "evil" companies. Some of that price difference would get arbitraged away by amoral opportunists just looking to make a buck, but the equilibrium price is less than the "evil" companies would get otherwise. We see some of this effect in actual stock market data, today, where "sinful" companies like Altria or defense contractors tend to trade at lower P/E ratios than "good" companies like Google or Merck. Of course, this means that sinful companies tend to pay higher dividend yields, and evil investors end up with more money in their pocket. This is the price of not being evil.
- pauldino 17y ago
  FYI, The Corporation is on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/watch/118169/the-corporation http://www.hulu.com/watch/118169/the-corporation
celoyd 17y ago
I do horrible things to bacteria. I don’t consider myself evil. If Google does horrible things to entities 1/100,000th its size, it’s considered to be doing evil.
- mjw 17y ago
  Distinctions of physical size are more important to your moral philosophy than basic questions like "is this a sentient being"? If this is even part-way serious as a justification for abuses of corporate power, then what a terrible, glib argument.
  - celoyd 17y ago
    Hahah, of course not. I’m saying that large things that are net good can still do a lot of harm in absolute terms. The Google-to-person comparison is kind of iffy because the normal harm that a good person does is mostly below the threshold we care about. nostrademons makes this argument clearer in a sibling comment.
bena 17y ago
Distributed blame. No one person has to take the blame for any action. When you are only 1/1,000,000th responsible for something, it becomes easier to justify bad decisions.
ugh 17y ago
Is it really reasonable to expect individuals to always not be evil? I think it would be very hard to find individuals who were never evil and who were always consistent in what they do. It’s just that when I lie, I don’t have the power to cause harm that’s even comparable to what Google can cause.
nostrademons 17y ago
Here's the mathematical argument: A corporation is typically considered evil if any of its employees are evil. If you're feeling generous, maybe you'd relax that to a small group of employees, say 0.1%. For example, AIG employs close to 100,000 people, yet I doubt that more than a few hundred were involved in the mortgage derivative mess. Yet we still pretty much universally revile AIG. Say that 1% of people are evil. It's totally reasonable to expect an individual to be non-evil; after all, 99 out of 100 (in this model) are. But then extend that out to a large corporation. The probability that you'll find at least one evil person in a startup of 10 is (1 - .99^10) = 0.095, or about 10%. The probability that you'll find at least 100 evil people in a corporation of 20,000 is (1 - .99^19900), which according to Google calculator is 1, i.e. virtually certain (there's some round-off error there, but you get the point). In order to have any fighting chance at being non-evil, a large organization has to actively seek out evil and eject it from the organization, simply because the organization as a whole tends to be judged by its worst members. "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by math." - PG
- TotlolRon 17y ago
  Here's an opposite: "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke The bigger the group the higher the probability it includes a "good man" (or woman).
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    That's not really the opposite, though, because the natural state is "doing nothing", and by your quote, that leads to evil prevailing. I did say that companies that want to remain non-evil have to actively seek out and expel evil from the organization...
- donaq 17y ago
  the organization as a whole tends to be judged by its worst members. I would qualify that by pointing out that it's only true if the worst members are in positions of power. If the evil members of an organization are its janitors, our problem is minimal. Unfortunately, your argument mostly holds true because in any broth, the scum always rises to the top.
philwelch 17y ago
Simple human nature. For a single human being to do something evil, there's relatively little means of escape--that person has to feel justified in what they're doing, or at least have very strong personal motivations. But mobs will readily do things individual humans will not, and the delegation of responsibility inherent in following authority figures will short-circuit people's moral reasoning (Milgram experiment). It's not just corporations--street gangs, government agencies, churches, political organizations, and other groups have a much harder time than individuals maintaining a moral compass. As much as you want to pin institutional evil on individuals--be it mafia dons, dictators, CEO's, or crooked cops--at the very least, the institutions these people are part of are a necessary element in what happens.
- cousin_it 17y ago
  The Milgram experiment goes a long way in explaining the amorality of groups, but I think I have a simpler argument: Even if all people have equally strong consciences, some of them will worry more about proximate responsibility ("clean hands") and others about ultimate responsibility ("clear conscience"). In other words, some people would be more okay with ordering a man shot as long as they don't have to pull the trigger, and others would be more okay with joining a firing squad as long as they don't give the orders. Once the former start giving orders to the latter, the group will be able to do worse things than any individual member was capable of, but everyone still feels morally okay. To put it yet another way, for each morally questionable task that arises, a large group will probably contain someone who doesn't object to that specific task. Division of labor ensures that group morality sinks to the lowest common denominator.

I fail to understand why someting that is totally reasonable to expect from any indevisual suddenly becomes "amazingly hard" when the indeviduals are grouped together.

mark_h 17y ago

Watch "The Corporation" if you get the chance (although it's 4 hours long). Essentially, corporations have the legal rights of a person, but none of the incentives to "be good". Their sole imperative is to maximise value for shareholders, leading to behaviour -- as characterised in the documentary -- that would be classified as sociopathic in an actual person.

adrianwaj 17y ago
I wonder if there were more and better fair trade organizations, then investors and customers would be more picky as to who to associate, and corporations comply as a result. Who'd bear the cost of compliance? How successful has corporate social responsibility actually been? Will it ever reach China?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- shrughes 17y ago
  If large numbers of investors made decisions based on reasons other than profitability, other investors would buy more so-called "evil" companies' stock until the prices are back to what they would have been.
  - adrianwaj 17y ago
    Got it. Evil companies will exist so long as there are evil customers and evil investors who associate. As such, evil would have to be legislated out of existence if it can't be shamed: both of which impossible. btw, how do you know that you're evil? does the evilness change? how so?
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    That's not necessarily true. Investor psychology shifts the demand curve for the company's stock - if large numbers of investors made decisions based on reasons other than profitability, then they'd demand more shares of "good" companies and fewer shares of "evil" companies. Some of that price difference would get arbitraged away by amoral opportunists just looking to make a buck, but the equilibrium price is less than the "evil" companies would get otherwise. We see some of this effect in actual stock market data, today, where "sinful" companies like Altria or defense contractors tend to trade at lower P/E ratios than "good" companies like Google or Merck. Of course, this means that sinful companies tend to pay higher dividend yields, and evil investors end up with more money in their pocket. This is the price of not being evil.
pauldino 17y ago
FYI, The Corporation is on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/watch/118169/the-corporation http://www.hulu.com/watch/118169/the-corporation

celoyd 17y ago

I do horrible things to bacteria. I don’t consider myself evil. If Google does horrible things to entities 1/100,000th its size, it’s considered to be doing evil.

mjw 17y ago
Distinctions of physical size are more important to your moral philosophy than basic questions like "is this a sentient being"? If this is even part-way serious as a justification for abuses of corporate power, then what a terrible, glib argument.
- celoyd 17y ago
  Hahah, of course not. I’m saying that large things that are net good can still do a lot of harm in absolute terms. The Google-to-person comparison is kind of iffy because the normal harm that a good person does is mostly below the threshold we care about. nostrademons makes this argument clearer in a sibling comment.

bena 17y ago

Distributed blame. No one person has to take the blame for any action. When you are only 1/1,000,000th responsible for something, it becomes easier to justify bad decisions.

ugh 17y ago

Is it really reasonable to expect individuals to always not be evil? I think it would be very hard to find individuals who were never evil and who were always consistent in what they do. It’s just that when I lie, I don’t have the power to cause harm that’s even comparable to what Google can cause.

nostrademons 17y ago

Here's the mathematical argument: A corporation is typically considered evil if any of its employees are evil. If you're feeling generous, maybe you'd relax that to a small group of employees, say 0.1%. For example, AIG employs close to 100,000 people, yet I doubt that more than a few hundred were involved in the mortgage derivative mess. Yet we still pretty much universally revile AIG. Say that 1% of people are evil. It's totally reasonable to expect an individual to be non-evil; after all, 99 out of 100 (in this model) are. But then extend that out to a large corporation. The probability that you'll find at least one evil person in a startup of 10 is (1 - .99^10) = 0.095, or about 10%. The probability that you'll find at least 100 evil people in a corporation of 20,000 is (1 - .99^19900), which according to Google calculator is 1, i.e. virtually certain (there's some round-off error there, but you get the point). In order to have any fighting chance at being non-evil, a large organization has to actively seek out evil and eject it from the organization, simply because the organization as a whole tends to be judged by its worst members. "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by math." - PG

TotlolRon 17y ago
Here's an opposite: "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke The bigger the group the higher the probability it includes a "good man" (or woman).
- nostrademons 17y ago
  That's not really the opposite, though, because the natural state is "doing nothing", and by your quote, that leads to evil prevailing. I did say that companies that want to remain non-evil have to actively seek out and expel evil from the organization...
donaq 17y ago
the organization as a whole tends to be judged by its worst members. I would qualify that by pointing out that it's only true if the worst members are in positions of power. If the evil members of an organization are its janitors, our problem is minimal. Unfortunately, your argument mostly holds true because in any broth, the scum always rises to the top.

philwelch 17y ago

Simple human nature. For a single human being to do something evil, there's relatively little means of escape--that person has to feel justified in what they're doing, or at least have very strong personal motivations. But mobs will readily do things individual humans will not, and the delegation of responsibility inherent in following authority figures will short-circuit people's moral reasoning (Milgram experiment). It's not just corporations--street gangs, government agencies, churches, political organizations, and other groups have a much harder time than individuals maintaining a moral compass. As much as you want to pin institutional evil on individuals--be it mafia dons, dictators, CEO's, or crooked cops--at the very least, the institutions these people are part of are a necessary element in what happens.

cousin_it 17y ago
The Milgram experiment goes a long way in explaining the amorality of groups, but I think I have a simpler argument: Even if all people have equally strong consciences, some of them will worry more about proximate responsibility ("clean hands") and others about ultimate responsibility ("clear conscience"). In other words, some people would be more okay with ordering a man shot as long as they don't have to pull the trigger, and others would be more okay with joining a firing squad as long as they don't give the orders. Once the former start giving orders to the latter, the group will be able to do worse things than any individual member was capable of, but everyone still feels morally okay. To put it yet another way, for each morally questionable task that arises, a large group will probably contain someone who doesn't object to that specific task. Division of labor ensures that group morality sinks to the lowest common denominator.