2 ms·

Careful. Corporations operate to fulfill their mandate to shareholders, which is to make a profit. Employees, suppliers, real estate, customers, even executive

by bdamm 8y ago

Careful. Corporations operate to fulfill their mandate to shareholders, which is to make a profit. Employees, suppliers, real estate, customers, even executives are just mechanisms to achieve that end goal. There's no real sense of justice beyond not getting shut down. People, on the other hand, live in the real world, and need protection from forces that wish to obliterate what they need to seek happiness. This is the primary function of government, ideally, to create the markets within which corporations and people can get along and operate to their goals with relative safety. Yes, we need corporations. But we are not corporations.

rayiner 8y ago
> There's no real sense of justice beyond not getting shut down. Corporations have no greater or lesser sense of justice than people, because corporations are just groups of people acting in concert. (A fact that I'm reminded of every time I see a long line of cars with a single occupant in the HOV lane.)
- bdamm 8y ago
  Groups of people behave differently than individuals. Corporations are constructed with the entire purpose of something that an individual wouldn't or couldn't do. It is the job of a board member to ensure that. A person in a company making a moral decision involving the company's behavior isn't acting from a sense of personal morality because it isn't happening to them. The consequences aren't generally on them, other than losing their job. Yes, companies can be amoral, but not for the same reasons that people can be amoral.
- JudgeWapner 8y ago
  > groups of people acting in concert a better description would be "acting under contract" to produce returns for 99% wealthy shareholders at any cost whatsoever to the environment, to the economy, to other corporations, or to under-represented members of society.

2 ms·

Careful. Corporations operate to fulfill their mandate to shareholders, which is to make a profit. Employees, suppliers, real estate, customers, even executive

by bdamm 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago
> There's no real sense of justice beyond not getting shut down. Corporations have no greater or lesser sense of justice than people, because corporations are just groups of people acting in concert. (A fact that I'm reminded of every time I see a long line of cars with a single occupant in the HOV lane.)
- bdamm 8y ago
  Groups of people behave differently than individuals. Corporations are constructed with the entire purpose of something that an individual wouldn't or couldn't do. It is the job of a board member to ensure that. A person in a company making a moral decision involving the company's behavior isn't acting from a sense of personal morality because it isn't happening to them. The consequences aren't generally on them, other than losing their job. Yes, companies can be amoral, but not for the same reasons that people can be amoral.
- JudgeWapner 8y ago
  > groups of people acting in concert a better description would be "acting under contract" to produce returns for 99% wealthy shareholders at any cost whatsoever to the environment, to the economy, to other corporations, or to under-represented members of society.