3 ms·

Shouldn’t we be glad when incentives align like this? It seems bizarre to disapprove of a company doing something bad because of profit motive and disapprove of

• tathougies 8y ago
  The alignment of incentives is as fickle as the alignment of the stars. There's no telling when the incentives will line against you; that is why it's worrisome in the general case. > If you think profit motive is inherently bad regardless of any outcome, then fine, but that should be the focus of the argument. That is not at all what I claimed. All I suggested was that we shouldn't be cheering the banning of speech based off the profit incentive since there is no clear alignment in the general case between profit and ethics.
  • baddox 8y ago
    > The alignment of incentives is as fickle as the alignment of the stars. There's no telling when the incentives will line against you; that is why it's worrisome in the general case. That can be true. But any other concept that influences decision-making can also be fickle, e.g. "what the company thinks is moral." In fact, I would be more concerned if I saw a company doing something that seemed bad for their bottom line but was motivated by what the company's supposed moral values, because I know that the bottom line is always by definition an existential concern of the company, whereas its supposed moral values are not.