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> How can you convince people that what they did was legally and ethically wrong? Well if it's not illegal (as is the case currently) it's silly to convince th
by OnlineGladiator 7y ago
> How can you convince people that what they did was legally and ethically wrong?
Well if it's not illegal (as is the case currently) it's silly to convince them it's legally wrong.
Regarding ethics, in theory (I do not consider this a realistic solution) you could advocate for corporate reform and start pushing more B-Corps onto the world. It's worked wonders for Patagonia, but they are definitely an exceptional example.
Fundamentally the problem is a dichotomy - value creation versus value extraction. Do we want to make value extraction illegal? I hope someone will respond telling me why that is a terrible idea, but it actually sounds like the sort of morals-first law that might be good for everyone except parasitic investors. And I mean...why do we want more parasitic investors?
- fzeroracer 7y agoI think it's fair to make the case that something should be legally wrong, hence why I mentioned it. Something can be legally wrong but not ethically wrong and vice versa, and the best way to fix the problem is to address both at the same time. And I think the rationalization would be that investors create more value through ensuring efficient value extraction which then flows back into the economy. But overall I think you're right in that we should discourage value extraction because of how it leads to running businesses to favor yourself or your investors rather than the business itself. The contrast is that what's good for investors isn't always good for the business and vice versa. Right now I don't think there's strong enough checks on investors, since even in the case of failures they often come out ahead.