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Companies change more than people do. Am I supposed to trust Google blindly with all my data now because they used to say they wouldn't be evil? Am I supposed t

Companies change more than people do. Am I supposed to trust Google blindly with all my data now because they used to say they wouldn't be evil? Am I supposed to continue trusting boeing because they used to be an engineering driven culture, while ignoring the fact that there are different people in charge now?

asddubs 6y ago
all publicly traded companies are amoral and they don't rehabilitate like a person might. Microsoft is simply following the money, they haven't changed, and neither has google really. the behaviour may have changed, but it makes no sense to attribute it in the same way you would to a person
- dogma1138 6y ago
  It’s not that companies are amoral in a negative sense, but that you shouldn’t anthropomorphize them. All companies are there to make a profit, some might have a business model that is in line with your personal moral benchmarks, but just that it’s a business model. Both public and private companies can have business models that are driven by the morality of their founders and key employees but it’s still a business model. Cygnus wasn’t more moral than say Oracle, they just had developed a business model around FOSS services that was unique, since they didn’t held any IP they didn’t had the tools that some people may consider immoral such as protecting their patents through law suits or worse rent seeking based on IP they hold. Same goes for other companies today that primarily rely on FOSS software I don’t consider Ubuntu, Red Hat (even before the acquisition) or even Purism to be “moral” companies just because they can’t or don’t hammer someone with law suits or rake in royalties. I also don’t consider opposition to companies that do to be a simple moral issue. I can and do have my own opinions about companies that I feel practice more rent seeking than actual innovation or any sort of productive activity but I don’t see it to be a particularly moral stance to want them to go into financial trouble because in the end the losers will be their employees and shareholders. I much rather see companies like Oracle for example be successful based on true productivity than go into financial trouble.
  - ta2234234242 6y ago
    > It’s not that companies are amoral in a negative sense, but that you shouldn’t anthropomorphize them. But companies are run by people. I think it's easier to think that companies are more like profit robots to get past our qualms of what we expect of humans, but in the end they are made of and run by humans. So much ink of US history has been used to write about corporate scandals and the profiteering that we just come to expect it -- notably the 2008 recession was caused by pure unadulterated greed on a vast scale. JPMC plead guilty to three felonies and basically got a handslap. Talk about moral hazard! https://www.huffpost.com/entry/time-for-three-strikes-an_b_7596946 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/time-for-three-strikes-an_b_7... PS. You might think that $35B is a large fine, but they have $3T under management. https://www.google.com/search?q=JPMC+assets+under+management&oq=JPMC+assets+under+management&aqs=chrome..69i57l2j69i59.4812j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=JPMC+assets+under+management...
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      People do amoral stuff all the time, even those who claim they have high morals. What most morals are is boils down to what behavior is acceptable and beneficial or to be more exact the set of incentives and repercussions that society enforces. No one can really argue that downloading a movie or a songs is an objectively moral act, however most people can easily justify it as a victimless crime, some even justify it by claiming that the entertainment industry itself is immoral. What you essentially have is people with targets and an incentive structure that is misaligned with what you or society at large consider to be moral. If a business can make a large sum of money by doing something against the rules and the punishment is smaller than the profits it will essentially always lead to “amoral” behavior.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - salawat 6y ago
      The thing I find interesting, is that part of what makes up the deterrence of a felony is the loss of representation in the political system, yet, corporations aren't hamstrung by that at all. They don't get a proper vote in the system, yet their lobbyists still get a say when it comes to regulatory proceedings. Until we can actually deprive bad acting companies of the ability to influence the political landscape, nothing is going to stand a significant chance of actually making a misalignment of moral/legal compass hurt.
- Cullinet 6y ago
  The way i read your comment, I think I have identified a bit of confusion at least in the words with which you have expressed your comment: You are distinguishing between Microsoft the corporation and persons who might rehabilitate, although how I read your sentence, I infer that you consider Microsoft a person, only a different kind of person to human beings. I don't know if I'm right about how I read you, but I think I can comment usefully on a different distinction which I think is the most important one necessary to make in these kinds of comparisons: A company is a legal person. But it is unhelpful to think about a corporate person in terms with which you might regard a human being. I find it very much clearer to think about the body corporate as taking on the character and nature bestowed upon it by its directing executive management / board. Certainly it is by this means that any company has ever acquired a psychopathy. AS several comments also say in different ways, the caveat is that once you replace the human animus that directs the behaviour of the company, you can completely change the behaviour of a corporate being. What I think is being conflated here frequently is the organisational behavioural properties of any large organisations that have vestigial and inhibiting effect on corporate body character redefining changes. These things are always something that I have to carefully unpick whenever you want to avoid confusing myself and that's after 35 years of analysing corporate beings looking for long term bets. It's not easy or at least it never got easier for me. I wish I could weigh in on the issue which I think everyone cares about most : the sincerity of Microsoft and even the question of whether Microsoft is capable of sincerity. So far I can only agree with a tangential comment made last week, how the old evil Microsoft at least sure documented everything far better. If they documented like the Technet I remember, for the whole WSL game, now that might convince me they mean well towards the open world. But somehow I think Microsoft embraced and only extended the documentation shame...
croes 6y ago
Never trust big companies. The driving force is always money and if the could get away with it they screw their customers. MS just changed it's leverage a bit. VS Code, Github, Edge based on Chromium. There is a pattern.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Of course the driving force is money, thats what makes it possible to trust some companies. Its a simple motive to understand. There are a lot of ways to make money. If the company is making money through a strategy that creates incentives to drive behaviors I like or can work with, I can trust that they'll keep doing that as long as the strategy and incentives stay in place. There's nothing wrong with making money as a driving force. Right now, I can trust best buy to not sell counterfeit/fake electronics and have a good in store experience because that's what differentiates them from Amazon and lets them keep making money. They're not going to try and screw me over because that's not how their business model works. Making money is morally neutral. I could be giving a company money because they're providing me a value add, which is a good thing, or because they're exploiting me through monopoly practices, which is not.
  - croes 6y ago
    They don't need to sell fake electronics. Ever heard of planned obsolescence? You already got screwed. They provide you value? What do you think advertising is for? Not everything you think has value for you is also valuable
hinkley 6y ago
Who do you give more leeway to, your friend who was great for a long time and has been kind of a dick lately, or the asshole who made your sister cry, punched your best friend, and lied to your fiancee causing her to break up with you, but now says they've changed? Usually you try to stay as far away from that person as you can. If they want redemption they should find it with a new set of people. They set that bridge on fire while we asked them not to. They watched it burn. They gloated the entire time. The ashes have washed away but many of us remember.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Companies aren't people no matter what the law says so you can't compare the two. Companies are run by people and those people change over time which is much more than any single person changes over time. So effectively the Microsoft of today and the Microsoft of 20 years ago are different entities as the people running it are different.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Nadella has been there for 27 years.
    - recursive 6y ago
      And for at least 20 of those, he was not CEO. You might not agree with it, but "change from the inside" is a point of view.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        It's a point of view, but more often than not it is simply a justification for past actions.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  If the asshole says they've changed because they got their brain swapped out with someone else and is now literally a different person, then yes, I'd give them some more leeway. Satya Nadella is not Steve Ballamer. Humans don't get to literally swap out the part of their brain in charge with time.

asddubs 6y ago

all publicly traded companies are amoral and they don't rehabilitate like a person might. Microsoft is simply following the money, they haven't changed, and neither has google really. the behaviour may have changed, but it makes no sense to attribute it in the same way you would to a person

dogma1138 6y ago
It’s not that companies are amoral in a negative sense, but that you shouldn’t anthropomorphize them. All companies are there to make a profit, some might have a business model that is in line with your personal moral benchmarks, but just that it’s a business model. Both public and private companies can have business models that are driven by the morality of their founders and key employees but it’s still a business model. Cygnus wasn’t more moral than say Oracle, they just had developed a business model around FOSS services that was unique, since they didn’t held any IP they didn’t had the tools that some people may consider immoral such as protecting their patents through law suits or worse rent seeking based on IP they hold. Same goes for other companies today that primarily rely on FOSS software I don’t consider Ubuntu, Red Hat (even before the acquisition) or even Purism to be “moral” companies just because they can’t or don’t hammer someone with law suits or rake in royalties. I also don’t consider opposition to companies that do to be a simple moral issue. I can and do have my own opinions about companies that I feel practice more rent seeking than actual innovation or any sort of productive activity but I don’t see it to be a particularly moral stance to want them to go into financial trouble because in the end the losers will be their employees and shareholders. I much rather see companies like Oracle for example be successful based on true productivity than go into financial trouble.
- ta2234234242 6y ago
  > It’s not that companies are amoral in a negative sense, but that you shouldn’t anthropomorphize them. But companies are run by people. I think it's easier to think that companies are more like profit robots to get past our qualms of what we expect of humans, but in the end they are made of and run by humans. So much ink of US history has been used to write about corporate scandals and the profiteering that we just come to expect it -- notably the 2008 recession was caused by pure unadulterated greed on a vast scale. JPMC plead guilty to three felonies and basically got a handslap. Talk about moral hazard! https://www.huffpost.com/entry/time-for-three-strikes-an_b_7596946 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/time-for-three-strikes-an_b_7... PS. You might think that $35B is a large fine, but they have $3T under management. https://www.google.com/search?q=JPMC+assets+under+management&oq=JPMC+assets+under+management&aqs=chrome..69i57l2j69i59.4812j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=JPMC+assets+under+management...
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    People do amoral stuff all the time, even those who claim they have high morals. What most morals are is boils down to what behavior is acceptable and beneficial or to be more exact the set of incentives and repercussions that society enforces. No one can really argue that downloading a movie or a songs is an objectively moral act, however most people can easily justify it as a victimless crime, some even justify it by claiming that the entertainment industry itself is immoral. What you essentially have is people with targets and an incentive structure that is misaligned with what you or society at large consider to be moral. If a business can make a large sum of money by doing something against the rules and the punishment is smaller than the profits it will essentially always lead to “amoral” behavior.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - salawat 6y ago
    The thing I find interesting, is that part of what makes up the deterrence of a felony is the loss of representation in the political system, yet, corporations aren't hamstrung by that at all. They don't get a proper vote in the system, yet their lobbyists still get a say when it comes to regulatory proceedings. Until we can actually deprive bad acting companies of the ability to influence the political landscape, nothing is going to stand a significant chance of actually making a misalignment of moral/legal compass hurt.
Cullinet 6y ago
The way i read your comment, I think I have identified a bit of confusion at least in the words with which you have expressed your comment: You are distinguishing between Microsoft the corporation and persons who might rehabilitate, although how I read your sentence, I infer that you consider Microsoft a person, only a different kind of person to human beings. I don't know if I'm right about how I read you, but I think I can comment usefully on a different distinction which I think is the most important one necessary to make in these kinds of comparisons: A company is a legal person. But it is unhelpful to think about a corporate person in terms with which you might regard a human being. I find it very much clearer to think about the body corporate as taking on the character and nature bestowed upon it by its directing executive management / board. Certainly it is by this means that any company has ever acquired a psychopathy. AS several comments also say in different ways, the caveat is that once you replace the human animus that directs the behaviour of the company, you can completely change the behaviour of a corporate being. What I think is being conflated here frequently is the organisational behavioural properties of any large organisations that have vestigial and inhibiting effect on corporate body character redefining changes. These things are always something that I have to carefully unpick whenever you want to avoid confusing myself and that's after 35 years of analysing corporate beings looking for long term bets. It's not easy or at least it never got easier for me. I wish I could weigh in on the issue which I think everyone cares about most : the sincerity of Microsoft and even the question of whether Microsoft is capable of sincerity. So far I can only agree with a tangential comment made last week, how the old evil Microsoft at least sure documented everything far better. If they documented like the Technet I remember, for the whole WSL game, now that might convince me they mean well towards the open world. But somehow I think Microsoft embraced and only extended the documentation shame...

croes 6y ago

Never trust big companies. The driving force is always money and if the could get away with it they screw their customers. MS just changed it's leverage a bit. VS Code, Github, Edge based on Chromium. There is a pattern.

vikramkr 6y ago
Of course the driving force is money, thats what makes it possible to trust some companies. Its a simple motive to understand. There are a lot of ways to make money. If the company is making money through a strategy that creates incentives to drive behaviors I like or can work with, I can trust that they'll keep doing that as long as the strategy and incentives stay in place. There's nothing wrong with making money as a driving force. Right now, I can trust best buy to not sell counterfeit/fake electronics and have a good in store experience because that's what differentiates them from Amazon and lets them keep making money. They're not going to try and screw me over because that's not how their business model works. Making money is morally neutral. I could be giving a company money because they're providing me a value add, which is a good thing, or because they're exploiting me through monopoly practices, which is not.
- croes 6y ago
  They don't need to sell fake electronics. Ever heard of planned obsolescence? You already got screwed. They provide you value? What do you think advertising is for? Not everything you think has value for you is also valuable

hinkley 6y ago

Who do you give more leeway to, your friend who was great for a long time and has been kind of a dick lately, or the asshole who made your sister cry, punched your best friend, and lied to your fiancee causing her to break up with you, but now says they've changed? Usually you try to stay as far away from that person as you can. If they want redemption they should find it with a new set of people. They set that bridge on fire while we asked them not to. They watched it burn. They gloated the entire time. The ashes have washed away but many of us remember.

marcinzm 6y ago
Companies aren't people no matter what the law says so you can't compare the two. Companies are run by people and those people change over time which is much more than any single person changes over time. So effectively the Microsoft of today and the Microsoft of 20 years ago are different entities as the people running it are different.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Nadella has been there for 27 years.
  - recursive 6y ago
    And for at least 20 of those, he was not CEO. You might not agree with it, but "change from the inside" is a point of view.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      It's a point of view, but more often than not it is simply a justification for past actions.
vikramkr 6y ago
If the asshole says they've changed because they got their brain swapped out with someone else and is now literally a different person, then yes, I'd give them some more leeway. Satya Nadella is not Steve Ballamer. Humans don't get to literally swap out the part of their brain in charge with time.