4 ms·

I hate this attitude that treats corporations as having zero responsibility beyond what they are legally mandated to do. Yes, it is an observable fact that corp

I hate this attitude that treats corporations as having zero responsibility beyond what they are legally mandated to do. Yes, it is an observable fact that corporatism and market economics incentivize corporations to behave that way. But it is an unjustified leap to turn that into a moral claim that it is ethically acceptable for that to be true. People are incentivized to commit package theft in the US today. The odds of being caught and prosecuted are very slim, and the upside is you get free stuff. As an economic action, it is very market efficient: low barrier of entry, large number of "sellers", few cabals or controls over prices. There definitely isn't perfect information on products, but given that the cost is near-zero, that doesn't matter much. As a business, "package theft" is a great one to get into, and the market highly rewards you for doing so. However, we correctly consider people who do so as despicable shitwads who rightfully earn our scorn and condemnation. We publicly shame them, and certainly don't want to hang out with them and count them as friends. We should do the same with businesses that do morally harmful acts, regardless of whether the act is technically illegal or incentivized by market forces. It is certainly the business's fault when they do a shitty thing. They have fully agency in the choice of whether or not do so.

dragonwriter 6y ago
Corporations aren't natural persons and have no ethics. They are abstract creations of law and the only legitimate expectations of corporations as corporations are their responses to structural incentives including enforced legal obligations. We can talk about the ethics of the actions of corporate decision-makers, but only while keeping in mind that structural incentives mean that decision-makers who sacrifice the narrow interests of corporate investors for ethical reasons beyond the constraints forcibly externally imposed on corporations are likely to, over time, be replaced by those who do not. If you want corporations to act consistently with some view of ethics, you aren't going to do it sustainably by moral persuasion directed at decision-makers, but only by shifting the structural incentives.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations. Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. It's just a legal accident, a mummers farce, and you defending it is morally reprehensible too. Worse still, it didn't used to be this way till some prat of an economist (probably American) starting saying so, and a bunch of people smelling easy money piled on. Companies used to care about their image, now their "care" about their shareholders (but actually their contractual bonuses and severance packages).
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations. No, I'm saying that considering corporations to be subjects of morality at all is pointless, and that one ought to consider what they want corporations to do to acheive moral ends, and then work to establish structures to at least incentivize that, if not actually constrain them to it. > Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. I think you start from a false premise here; that it is of no value to analyze corporations as if they were moral actors does not in any way absolve any natural persons for the immorality of any actions they undertake in or around a corporate structure. It just removes the ability to pass blame for immorality off on to an abstraction, and focuses it on the people responsible for the abstraction (which, for creatures of law, in addition to any others includes those responsible for the law, either as lawmakers or as electors thereof.)
    - mattmanser 6y ago
      Why is it pointless? Corporations are simply a collective of people, working together. There was a story on here today about the dilemma a roman consul faced because the laws were contradictory. It was fine to murder for revenge, in fact Roman law didn't get involved in revenge or murders really, but patricide was viewed as an absolute wrong, a no-no. The woman had murder her Mum in revenge as the Mum had killed her grand-children to spite her Daughter. It was a real dilemma, revenge is fine, and it was a good reason for revenge, but parricide is an absolute wrong. Does that sound normal? Of course not TO US. I think that in the future, today's corporate law will be viewed just as asinine and bizarre. Corporations poisoning people by flooding chemicals into rivers or releasing gasses or toxins, murdering people with product defects they decided not recall or destroying society's common goods, but all the people involved were let free rather than incarcerated for 20 years as accessories to murder? Thousands of people colluding to murder people with cigarettes when they knew how lethal they were? Fine. Because they were "employees" and the "person" doing it was a legal figment called a corporation? A bunch of black people in America get incarcerated for simply being friends/near the murderer, but a bunch of white people who all spent years or even decades covering up systematic mass-murder get to walk away? Man, when you actually think about it it's mind-blowing. White collar crime is so easy to get away with. It's a convenient fabrication that makes sense only when you're inside the system. I'm a pragmatist, it's not going to change, it's the way it is, but otoh you simply can't see the wood for the trees. You think, somehow, it's right.

dragonwriter 6y ago

Corporations aren't natural persons and have no ethics. They are abstract creations of law and the only legitimate expectations of corporations as corporations are their responses to structural incentives including enforced legal obligations. We can talk about the ethics of the actions of corporate decision-makers, but only while keeping in mind that structural incentives mean that decision-makers who sacrifice the narrow interests of corporate investors for ethical reasons beyond the constraints forcibly externally imposed on corporations are likely to, over time, be replaced by those who do not. If you want corporations to act consistently with some view of ethics, you aren't going to do it sustainably by moral persuasion directed at decision-makers, but only by shifting the structural incentives.

mattmanser 6y ago
You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations. Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. It's just a legal accident, a mummers farce, and you defending it is morally reprehensible too. Worse still, it didn't used to be this way till some prat of an economist (probably American) starting saying so, and a bunch of people smelling easy money piled on. Companies used to care about their image, now their "care" about their shareholders (but actually their contractual bonuses and severance packages).
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations. No, I'm saying that considering corporations to be subjects of morality at all is pointless, and that one ought to consider what they want corporations to do to acheive moral ends, and then work to establish structures to at least incentivize that, if not actually constrain them to it. > Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. I think you start from a false premise here; that it is of no value to analyze corporations as if they were moral actors does not in any way absolve any natural persons for the immorality of any actions they undertake in or around a corporate structure. It just removes the ability to pass blame for immorality off on to an abstraction, and focuses it on the people responsible for the abstraction (which, for creatures of law, in addition to any others includes those responsible for the law, either as lawmakers or as electors thereof.)
  - mattmanser 6y ago
    Why is it pointless? Corporations are simply a collective of people, working together. There was a story on here today about the dilemma a roman consul faced because the laws were contradictory. It was fine to murder for revenge, in fact Roman law didn't get involved in revenge or murders really, but patricide was viewed as an absolute wrong, a no-no. The woman had murder her Mum in revenge as the Mum had killed her grand-children to spite her Daughter. It was a real dilemma, revenge is fine, and it was a good reason for revenge, but parricide is an absolute wrong. Does that sound normal? Of course not TO US. I think that in the future, today's corporate law will be viewed just as asinine and bizarre. Corporations poisoning people by flooding chemicals into rivers or releasing gasses or toxins, murdering people with product defects they decided not recall or destroying society's common goods, but all the people involved were let free rather than incarcerated for 20 years as accessories to murder? Thousands of people colluding to murder people with cigarettes when they knew how lethal they were? Fine. Because they were "employees" and the "person" doing it was a legal figment called a corporation? A bunch of black people in America get incarcerated for simply being friends/near the murderer, but a bunch of white people who all spent years or even decades covering up systematic mass-murder get to walk away? Man, when you actually think about it it's mind-blowing. White collar crime is so easy to get away with. It's a convenient fabrication that makes sense only when you're inside the system. I'm a pragmatist, it's not going to change, it's the way it is, but otoh you simply can't see the wood for the trees. You think, somehow, it's right.