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> I take you at your word. It's just hilarious that a post urging empathy for executives floats to the top while it's bootstraps for everyone else. [EDIT: in ot

> I take you at your word. It's just hilarious that a post urging empathy for executives floats to the top while it's bootstraps for everyone else. [EDIT: in other upvoted HN posts, not necessarily yours.] In some ways, having empathy (or even sympathy) for executives in situations such as this is a more damning call to action. If a problem is a result of evil people doing evil things, then the obvious solution is to punish the evil people. If instead a problem is a result of good-natured people following a system with broken incentives, then the only effective response would be large-scale, systematic change. Unfortunately, we don't often see things this way as a society. Our drive to action seems directly correlated to our sense of moral outrage, and we skip over the "broken system" step between "freak accident" and "mustache-twirling villain."

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
They're not mutually exclusive. Broken incentives reward broken individuals and punish those who act in more ethical ways. The legal system distinguishes between deliberate premeditated murder and accidental or negligent manslaughter. Corporate ethics seems oddly resistant to understanding the distinction. If your actions cause significant harm the profit motive gives you very strong legal protection - a literal get out of jail free card. While it's not completely reliable, it's certainly more powerful than any non-corporate defence where culpability is obvious. You're far more likely to go to jail for corporate fraud - which is an outrage against the profit motive - than for life-terminating harm inflicted on innocent bystanders. This has the predictable effect of selecting executives who either don't understand that their actions cause harm, or don't care. The system selects the people, and the people propagate its values. Neither is wholly innocent. Every so often someone with a genuine ethical sense says "I'm not doing this." And they often lose their job when they do.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

They're not mutually exclusive. Broken incentives reward broken individuals and punish those who act in more ethical ways. The legal system distinguishes between deliberate premeditated murder and accidental or negligent manslaughter. Corporate ethics seems oddly resistant to understanding the distinction. If your actions cause significant harm the profit motive gives you very strong legal protection - a literal get out of jail free card. While it's not completely reliable, it's certainly more powerful than any non-corporate defence where culpability is obvious. You're far more likely to go to jail for corporate fraud - which is an outrage against the profit motive - than for life-terminating harm inflicted on innocent bystanders. This has the predictable effect of selecting executives who either don't understand that their actions cause harm, or don't care. The system selects the people, and the people propagate its values. Neither is wholly innocent. Every so often someone with a genuine ethical sense says "I'm not doing this." And they often lose their job when they do.