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What's weird is no one really notices/cares about this type of behavior. I sometimes wonder if this is seen as a feature: institutional sociopathy shields power

What's weird is no one really notices/cares about this type of behavior. I sometimes wonder if this is seen as a feature: institutional sociopathy shields powerful sociopathic people from their consequences. A few possibilities: * people generally cannot discern moral realities within complex systems, instead preferring simpler narratives ("he made a lot of money, he must be a decent chap") * people can see it on occasion, but insist that the problem is the single bad actor rather than the system enabling them * people realize they can't do much about it, as they're implicitly bound up in this system run amok

josephg 5y ago
Yeah I’m puzzled why people don’t seem to care too. I think it’s mostly the third - complaining about companies acting malevolently is boring like climate change. Most people would rather not think about it. At the companies themselves, I blame the C suite entirely. It’s a leadership problem. What is the vision for your company? Why do we all get out of bed in the morning? If the goal is to make the world better, then concerns about how your business is impacting the world would matter. But having a goal to simply to enrich the founders (which seems to be the case with most tech companies), is like making an entire car just so you can drive to the gas station. Companies like Twitter and Roblox change the world by their very presence. It’s shameful to waste that capacity by not making the world better in the process.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Well, for public-traded companies, anyone in the C suite caught doing that would be fired, so it's not a mystery that they don't...
  - josephg 5y ago
    That’s simply not true. CEOs can and do argue for value based decision making in plenty of companies. Plenty of boards support them in this. Values alignment, “knowing your why”, acting with integrity - these are the qualities that help your company still be around in 100 years time. Even if you want to make the most money possible, you usually won’t get there by screwing over your employees and customers.

josephg 5y ago

Yeah I’m puzzled why people don’t seem to care too. I think it’s mostly the third - complaining about companies acting malevolently is boring like climate change. Most people would rather not think about it. At the companies themselves, I blame the C suite entirely. It’s a leadership problem. What is the vision for your company? Why do we all get out of bed in the morning? If the goal is to make the world better, then concerns about how your business is impacting the world would matter. But having a goal to simply to enrich the founders (which seems to be the case with most tech companies), is like making an entire car just so you can drive to the gas station. Companies like Twitter and Roblox change the world by their very presence. It’s shameful to waste that capacity by not making the world better in the process.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
Well, for public-traded companies, anyone in the C suite caught doing that would be fired, so it's not a mystery that they don't...
- josephg 5y ago
  That’s simply not true. CEOs can and do argue for value based decision making in plenty of companies. Plenty of boards support them in this. Values alignment, “knowing your why”, acting with integrity - these are the qualities that help your company still be around in 100 years time. Even if you want to make the most money possible, you usually won’t get there by screwing over your employees and customers.