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> I know it's easy to look at Jerry as "the bad guy" in this situation, but he is simply reacting to his incentives The way you react to incentives determines

> I know it's easy to look at Jerry as "the bad guy" in this situation, but he is simply reacting to his incentives The way you react to incentives determines your moral character. If an action is harmful on its own, it doesn't become any less harmful if you also stand to gain from it. Companies are amoral and lack human agency, and hence they cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. The responsibility lies with the people making the decisions within the company. And not just the people on the top, but also the people making the day-to-day choices that transform the strategic decisions into reality. (See also: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil)

NegativeK 3y ago
People continue to parrot the phrase that corporations are typically beholden to their shareholders to maximize profit. We also know from the prison experiments that people have a really hard time not falling into evil behavior when it's expected. But I agree: neither of those facts absolve every individual in any organization anywhere from doing the wrong thing. Even if someone else would step in to your spot and do the wrong thing, it's still your responsibility.
- jdiff 3y ago
  The prison experiments are long debunked. It required lying to and manipulating the guards and has never been successfully replicated. They had to be pushed and coerced into evil behavior when they were explicitly being told it was not just expected but required.
  - a123b456c 3y ago
    Plus, no control group. Not an experiment.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    Doesn't matter, we have real world proof of the same thanks to Nazi Germany (they were good for something I guess). The book Ordinary Men, based on which there's a Netflix documentary too, follows the story of a bunch of police reservists (basically regular men, in their 50s, from Hamburg, who were too old to be conscripted in the army, so were conscripted in the police for "police duties"). They were regular people, with families and stuff, mostly dockworkers so probably leaned left before the rise of Nazis, but were sent to commit massacres in Poland and they did it. Some struggled, especially after the first ones, but later on it just became normal. Those were regular people, not some crazy Nazi fanatics convinced Jews and Poles were subhuman. One of them convinced himself to target children for murder, because it was merciful - you see, they would die on their own without their parents (which were murdered by his colleagues), so giving them a quick death was mercy. He had kids himself too. Harrowing stuff, but quite decent proof that humans are capable of anything. Nobody is born a monster, but can become one in the wrong circumstances and through bad personal choices.
    - froggit 3y ago
      What in the actual fuck? Are we serious with these implications that Jerry is suffering from the same thought processes that Nazi war criminals used to justify crimes against humanity? It took all of 7 posts and "Jerry from the Ads team" to become "Jerry from the Gestapo." He's not at the bottom of some slippery slope, a husk of a human leftover from plunging into darkness. He's on the Ads team doing what he's supposed to: making money from Ads. There's a difference between doing something because it's "what you're told" and doing it because it's the right thing for you to be doing. The right thing for Jerry just happens to be a major inconvenience for Anil. This is an oversimplified apples-to-chickens kind of comparison, but I worked a cybersecurity job where the right thing for me was keeping the firewall up, but Network/IT administration made it clear they found it inconvenient. After leaving, I learned a Network admin DID take down the firewall and that was a bigger inconvenience. Everyone ultimately wants the same end result and pushing your team's priorities is how you contribute; it doesn't make you "bad." It'd be a bit different if Jerry was out finding children so he could kill them, dismember them and sew their skin into his clothing. But at least he seems considerate enough that he'd do it in that order.
  - omgsharks 3y ago
    Isn’t pushing and coercing what’s going on here too though? With the company setting expectations and requirements while people’s job/career hinges on it. I would consider Jerry as being corporately coerced here and thus more inclined to act immoraly.
- chii 3y ago
  > it's still your responsibility. it's not, in the sense of social darwinian competition. If i stand to lose money, or have to sacrifice something in order to be "moral" when my "competitor" doesn't and thus gain an advantage towards me, i cannot be moral. That's why my rule is: if it's not illegal, it's moral.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Mortality optimizes across longer time horizons than this individual moment. If you can steal something and with very high probability not get caught then there’s seemingly a net benefit. However, if you start to steal regularly the odds you get caught are much higher than the most common probability * the number of times you steal. This is true across a wide range of unethical behavior. Try to remember you lack perfect information and so can’t accurately judge the odds every time. Thus regularly taking low probability risks to your reputation and chances are you’re going to miss judge some of those risks. Heuristics like this aren’t perfect, but it’s easy to underestimate how valuable a positive reputation is.
  - NegativeK 3y ago
    That sounds like a dystopian hellscape.
    - 20after4 3y ago
      It's the dystopian hellscape that we live in.
  - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
    K, omw to bang your wife
    - dang 3y ago
      We've banned this account. If the comment were just a one-off, I'd post a warning instead, but you've not been using the site as intended in other places either. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- philipov 3y ago
  I really enjoyed this talk on the history of big-retail lobbying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0dBCooWGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0dBCooWGo It has a lot to say about the notion that corporations are beholden to shareholders to maximize profits. Who they're really beholden to are 80s-era corporate raiders who changed corporate culture by enforcing the Shareholder Capitalism model at financial gunpoint.
- brookst 3y ago
  The whole “companies must maximize profits at all costs” thing is false, fake, untrue. It’s easy to prove: if true, it would be illegal for companies to do any philanthropy at all. They do, out of some mix of brand building and PR and whatever, but obviously those same principles can be applied to any other policy that seeks to increase NPV of future profits at the expense of this quarter. Companies can and do pass up revenue opportunities and that is fine and legal.
  - nielsbot 3y ago
    even if it’s only 90% true it can still a useful characterization of corporations also, I think a lot of corporations do philanthropy as advertising, hoping it will be in a positive effect on revenue. So, still doing everything for the bottom line
    - philistine 3y ago
      It has to be debunked and people need to stop using it because whenever its brought up, its never as a thought exercice or as a 90% thing. It's always brought up as the exact truth.
      - anticensor 3y ago
        Swedish Aktienbolaget are actually required to maximise their profits, but not necessarily in the immediate term.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Philanthropy helps revenue by converting those actions into lower taxes for the companies that do philanthropy. It is still about profits at the end of the day.
    - unmole 3y ago
      > Philanthropy helps revenue by converting those actions into lower taxes for the companies that do philanthropy. This makes zero sense.
- octacat 3y ago
  More like "not just become evil, but also be actively punished for not to comply". Same with nazis below - if you go against, you risk to go to jail/die. Same with corpo CEOs - if they fail to maximise the profit, they would get fired and replaced. Or if they take risk to not copycat other companies.
asddubs 3y ago
this is true but it's also worth noting that people who are going to take a moral stance about this kind of thing are not going to last in those positions. this fact does not absolve jerry at all, of course.
skywal_l 3y ago
Kind of disagree. Employees, whatever their rank (except maybe at the very top) cannot be help responsible for doing their job because of the very simple fact that the purpose of a company is to maximize shareholders values. It's up to the government (meaning us) to make sure that there are guardrails so this search for profit do not negatively impact society. And this is exactly what the government is doing with this lawsuit.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  A long time ago, when I was doing my mandatory military service, we were told about situations where we were not allowed to follow the orders of our superiors. Even in the military, we were expected to think for ourselves, make our own decisions, and take responsibility for our actions. Employees are human beings and not property of their employers. As long as you are responsible for your actions outside work, you are also responsible while at work.
  - skywal_l 3y ago
    I understand your point and yes, personal responsibility is important and in the military, where people are not easily replaceable in the heat of action, especially in times of war, your point is absolutely valid. But what would have happen in that case if Jerry or Anil had quit in protest? Some other dude would have taken their place. People will act based on ethical standards that are derived from their cultural environment. Since the 70s/80s, the American society (and more generally the entire developed world) has been reorganized around ultra-liberal Chicago style view of the economy and especially the Friedman doctrine [0]. It is impossible (or comes with incredible personal cost) for an individual to go against the cultural grain. In this context, personal responsibility can never be a proper substitution to our collective responsibility as citizens. The silly notion of the heroic individual fighting against corruption, evil doing or whatnot is dangerous. Everyone of us is responsible for the world we live in, not Jerry in marketing. The law that we indirectly vote for and the one who enforce them on our behalf are the only true and meaningful weapons against our societies decadence. And these actions against Google and Amazon will show were we stand in that fight. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
johnnyworker 3y ago
> There was a widespread conviction that it is impossible to withstand temptation of any kind, that none of us could be trusted or even be expected to be trustworthy when the chips are down, that to be tempted and to be forced are almost the same, whereas in the words of Mary McCarthy, who first spotted this fallacy: "If somebody points a gun at you and says,'Kill your friend or I will kill you,' he is tempting you, that is all." And while a temptation where one's life is at stake may be a legal excuse for a crime, it certainly is not a moral justification. -- Hannah Arendt, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"

NegativeK 3y ago

People continue to parrot the phrase that corporations are typically beholden to their shareholders to maximize profit. We also know from the prison experiments that people have a really hard time not falling into evil behavior when it's expected. But I agree: neither of those facts absolve every individual in any organization anywhere from doing the wrong thing. Even if someone else would step in to your spot and do the wrong thing, it's still your responsibility.

jdiff 3y ago
The prison experiments are long debunked. It required lying to and manipulating the guards and has never been successfully replicated. They had to be pushed and coerced into evil behavior when they were explicitly being told it was not just expected but required.
- a123b456c 3y ago
  Plus, no control group. Not an experiment.
- sofixa 3y ago
  Doesn't matter, we have real world proof of the same thanks to Nazi Germany (they were good for something I guess). The book Ordinary Men, based on which there's a Netflix documentary too, follows the story of a bunch of police reservists (basically regular men, in their 50s, from Hamburg, who were too old to be conscripted in the army, so were conscripted in the police for "police duties"). They were regular people, with families and stuff, mostly dockworkers so probably leaned left before the rise of Nazis, but were sent to commit massacres in Poland and they did it. Some struggled, especially after the first ones, but later on it just became normal. Those were regular people, not some crazy Nazi fanatics convinced Jews and Poles were subhuman. One of them convinced himself to target children for murder, because it was merciful - you see, they would die on their own without their parents (which were murdered by his colleagues), so giving them a quick death was mercy. He had kids himself too. Harrowing stuff, but quite decent proof that humans are capable of anything. Nobody is born a monster, but can become one in the wrong circumstances and through bad personal choices.
  - froggit 3y ago
    What in the actual fuck? Are we serious with these implications that Jerry is suffering from the same thought processes that Nazi war criminals used to justify crimes against humanity? It took all of 7 posts and "Jerry from the Ads team" to become "Jerry from the Gestapo." He's not at the bottom of some slippery slope, a husk of a human leftover from plunging into darkness. He's on the Ads team doing what he's supposed to: making money from Ads. There's a difference between doing something because it's "what you're told" and doing it because it's the right thing for you to be doing. The right thing for Jerry just happens to be a major inconvenience for Anil. This is an oversimplified apples-to-chickens kind of comparison, but I worked a cybersecurity job where the right thing for me was keeping the firewall up, but Network/IT administration made it clear they found it inconvenient. After leaving, I learned a Network admin DID take down the firewall and that was a bigger inconvenience. Everyone ultimately wants the same end result and pushing your team's priorities is how you contribute; it doesn't make you "bad." It'd be a bit different if Jerry was out finding children so he could kill them, dismember them and sew their skin into his clothing. But at least he seems considerate enough that he'd do it in that order.
- omgsharks 3y ago
  Isn’t pushing and coercing what’s going on here too though? With the company setting expectations and requirements while people’s job/career hinges on it. I would consider Jerry as being corporately coerced here and thus more inclined to act immoraly.
chii 3y ago
> it's still your responsibility. it's not, in the sense of social darwinian competition. If i stand to lose money, or have to sacrifice something in order to be "moral" when my "competitor" doesn't and thus gain an advantage towards me, i cannot be moral. That's why my rule is: if it's not illegal, it's moral.
- Retric 3y ago
  Mortality optimizes across longer time horizons than this individual moment. If you can steal something and with very high probability not get caught then there’s seemingly a net benefit. However, if you start to steal regularly the odds you get caught are much higher than the most common probability * the number of times you steal. This is true across a wide range of unethical behavior. Try to remember you lack perfect information and so can’t accurately judge the odds every time. Thus regularly taking low probability risks to your reputation and chances are you’re going to miss judge some of those risks. Heuristics like this aren’t perfect, but it’s easy to underestimate how valuable a positive reputation is.
- NegativeK 3y ago
  That sounds like a dystopian hellscape.
  - 20after4 3y ago
    It's the dystopian hellscape that we live in.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
  K, omw to bang your wife
  - dang 3y ago
    We've banned this account. If the comment were just a one-off, I'd post a warning instead, but you've not been using the site as intended in other places either. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
philipov 3y ago
I really enjoyed this talk on the history of big-retail lobbying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0dBCooWGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0dBCooWGo It has a lot to say about the notion that corporations are beholden to shareholders to maximize profits. Who they're really beholden to are 80s-era corporate raiders who changed corporate culture by enforcing the Shareholder Capitalism model at financial gunpoint.
brookst 3y ago
The whole “companies must maximize profits at all costs” thing is false, fake, untrue. It’s easy to prove: if true, it would be illegal for companies to do any philanthropy at all. They do, out of some mix of brand building and PR and whatever, but obviously those same principles can be applied to any other policy that seeks to increase NPV of future profits at the expense of this quarter. Companies can and do pass up revenue opportunities and that is fine and legal.
- nielsbot 3y ago
  even if it’s only 90% true it can still a useful characterization of corporations also, I think a lot of corporations do philanthropy as advertising, hoping it will be in a positive effect on revenue. So, still doing everything for the bottom line
  - philistine 3y ago
    It has to be debunked and people need to stop using it because whenever its brought up, its never as a thought exercice or as a 90% thing. It's always brought up as the exact truth.
    - anticensor 3y ago
      Swedish Aktienbolaget are actually required to maximise their profits, but not necessarily in the immediate term.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Philanthropy helps revenue by converting those actions into lower taxes for the companies that do philanthropy. It is still about profits at the end of the day.
  - unmole 3y ago
    > Philanthropy helps revenue by converting those actions into lower taxes for the companies that do philanthropy. This makes zero sense.
octacat 3y ago
More like "not just become evil, but also be actively punished for not to comply". Same with nazis below - if you go against, you risk to go to jail/die. Same with corpo CEOs - if they fail to maximise the profit, they would get fired and replaced. Or if they take risk to not copycat other companies.

asddubs 3y ago

this is true but it's also worth noting that people who are going to take a moral stance about this kind of thing are not going to last in those positions. this fact does not absolve jerry at all, of course.

skywal_l 3y ago

Kind of disagree. Employees, whatever their rank (except maybe at the very top) cannot be help responsible for doing their job because of the very simple fact that the purpose of a company is to maximize shareholders values. It's up to the government (meaning us) to make sure that there are guardrails so this search for profit do not negatively impact society. And this is exactly what the government is doing with this lawsuit.

jltsiren 3y ago
A long time ago, when I was doing my mandatory military service, we were told about situations where we were not allowed to follow the orders of our superiors. Even in the military, we were expected to think for ourselves, make our own decisions, and take responsibility for our actions. Employees are human beings and not property of their employers. As long as you are responsible for your actions outside work, you are also responsible while at work.
- skywal_l 3y ago
  I understand your point and yes, personal responsibility is important and in the military, where people are not easily replaceable in the heat of action, especially in times of war, your point is absolutely valid. But what would have happen in that case if Jerry or Anil had quit in protest? Some other dude would have taken their place. People will act based on ethical standards that are derived from their cultural environment. Since the 70s/80s, the American society (and more generally the entire developed world) has been reorganized around ultra-liberal Chicago style view of the economy and especially the Friedman doctrine [0]. It is impossible (or comes with incredible personal cost) for an individual to go against the cultural grain. In this context, personal responsibility can never be a proper substitution to our collective responsibility as citizens. The silly notion of the heroic individual fighting against corruption, evil doing or whatnot is dangerous. Everyone of us is responsible for the world we live in, not Jerry in marketing. The law that we indirectly vote for and the one who enforce them on our behalf are the only true and meaningful weapons against our societies decadence. And these actions against Google and Amazon will show were we stand in that fight. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

johnnyworker 3y ago

> There was a widespread conviction that it is impossible to withstand temptation of any kind, that none of us could be trusted or even be expected to be trustworthy when the chips are down, that to be tempted and to be forced are almost the same, whereas in the words of Mary McCarthy, who first spotted this fallacy: "If somebody points a gun at you and says,'Kill your friend or I will kill you,' he is tempting you, that is all." And while a temptation where one's life is at stake may be a legal excuse for a crime, it certainly is not a moral justification. -- Hannah Arendt, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"