6 ms·

Companies, regardless of what the Supreme Court says, are not people; they don't have ethics and morals. All that matters is the balance sheet, the stock price,

Companies, regardless of what the Supreme Court says, are not people; they don't have ethics and morals. All that matters is the balance sheet, the stock price, and the executive bonus. You can have people running the company change what the company does to be more ethical or moral, but it's like training an elephant to do tricks: an unnatural edge case. Their natural incentives are more like swarms of locusts or jellyfish; the more you feed them, the larger they grow, the bigger impact they have on their environment. No real thoughts, just an urge to consume and expand.

BobbyJo 3y ago
Ethics an morals have financial upside, for people and groups of people (companies). For instance, do to their past behavior, and its publicity, Cisco is likely to lose many more competent employees during an acquisition than had they behaved otherwise.
- keiferkif 3y ago
  I would say that a lack of ethics has more financial upside
  - jacobr1 3y ago
    There are probably several local maxima on the distribution curve. At some point having dogmatic, extreme ethics probably hampers getting everything down, and the worst, most cartoonishly evil company also is leaving money on the table. In the less extreme, I think you probably have three schelling points. 1) High-Integrity companies that promote and use the culture of ethics to attract customers and employees. It probably is industry specific if this works. 2) You have "ethics agnostic", but legal" companies that just do focus on near-term profit maximizations and while they may have individuals trying to make ethical choices, the organizational structure won't reward that outside of the whatever profit it generates. Non ethical behavior that gets bad press or crosses idealogical lines, gets dropped fast if not profitable and arbitrarily depending on leadership otherwise. 3) Then you have companies covering up illegal/fraudulent issues, where the incentives are to double-down and reinforce the behavior.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    Depends the environment you're working in - there are several cultures within the US where I think your statement is quite true... but in general people find that working for a company that doesn't care for them is a detriment and will demand higher compensation due to the obvious risk. That all said - you should always be defensive as an employee about how much risk you accept on yourself since the employer/employee relationship can be terminated suddenly and without any real recourse in most circumstances.
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    Depends on the circumstances. If you are trying to make a valuable product, good ethics will probably serve you better than bad ones in a majority of cases. If you aren't concerned with generating real value and are fine with running your company and reputation into the ground, then sure.
tedivm 3y ago
That's an amazing cop out. Companies are run by people, people make the decisions, and ethics/morality can have an impact on the bottom line. Using "it's a company, ethics aren't real" is just an excuse people who make decisions use to act unethically.
- chii 3y ago
  > an excuse people who make decisions use to act unethically. at every level, the incentive is to maximize the profit margins. If acting ethically doesn't increase the profits, then any personal sacrifice on the part of the decision maker to act ethically is only going to get punished (may be not immediately, but certainly some time in the future).
  - vkou 3y ago
    If behaving ethically didn't cost anything, everyone would do it.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > at every level, the incentive is to maximize the profit margins This is wildly oversimplifying. For example, it theoretically rules out principle-agent problems.
    - chii 3y ago
      While true, you can somewhat assume that the principle could have already incentivized the agent to align by assigning rewards for increasing profits (aka, bonuses, stock grants based on performance targets etc).
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > you can somewhat assume that the principle could have already incentivized the agent to align by assigning rewards for increasing profits No, you can’t. This is the problem of corporate management. Management will tend to act to maximise profit margins or even the stock price is a bad explanatory model.
coredog64 3y ago
> Companies, regardless of what the Supreme Court says, are not people. What the USSC said was that voluntary associations of people don’t forfeit the rights of the individuals in the association.

BobbyJo 3y ago

Ethics an morals have financial upside, for people and groups of people (companies). For instance, do to their past behavior, and its publicity, Cisco is likely to lose many more competent employees during an acquisition than had they behaved otherwise.

keiferkif 3y ago
I would say that a lack of ethics has more financial upside
- jacobr1 3y ago
  There are probably several local maxima on the distribution curve. At some point having dogmatic, extreme ethics probably hampers getting everything down, and the worst, most cartoonishly evil company also is leaving money on the table. In the less extreme, I think you probably have three schelling points. 1) High-Integrity companies that promote and use the culture of ethics to attract customers and employees. It probably is industry specific if this works. 2) You have "ethics agnostic", but legal" companies that just do focus on near-term profit maximizations and while they may have individuals trying to make ethical choices, the organizational structure won't reward that outside of the whatever profit it generates. Non ethical behavior that gets bad press or crosses idealogical lines, gets dropped fast if not profitable and arbitrarily depending on leadership otherwise. 3) Then you have companies covering up illegal/fraudulent issues, where the incentives are to double-down and reinforce the behavior.
- munk-a 3y ago
  Depends the environment you're working in - there are several cultures within the US where I think your statement is quite true... but in general people find that working for a company that doesn't care for them is a detriment and will demand higher compensation due to the obvious risk. That all said - you should always be defensive as an employee about how much risk you accept on yourself since the employer/employee relationship can be terminated suddenly and without any real recourse in most circumstances.
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  Depends on the circumstances. If you are trying to make a valuable product, good ethics will probably serve you better than bad ones in a majority of cases. If you aren't concerned with generating real value and are fine with running your company and reputation into the ground, then sure.

tedivm 3y ago

That's an amazing cop out. Companies are run by people, people make the decisions, and ethics/morality can have an impact on the bottom line. Using "it's a company, ethics aren't real" is just an excuse people who make decisions use to act unethically.

chii 3y ago
> an excuse people who make decisions use to act unethically. at every level, the incentive is to maximize the profit margins. If acting ethically doesn't increase the profits, then any personal sacrifice on the part of the decision maker to act ethically is only going to get punished (may be not immediately, but certainly some time in the future).
- vkou 3y ago
  If behaving ethically didn't cost anything, everyone would do it.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > at every level, the incentive is to maximize the profit margins This is wildly oversimplifying. For example, it theoretically rules out principle-agent problems.
  - chii 3y ago
    While true, you can somewhat assume that the principle could have already incentivized the agent to align by assigning rewards for increasing profits (aka, bonuses, stock grants based on performance targets etc).
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > you can somewhat assume that the principle could have already incentivized the agent to align by assigning rewards for increasing profits No, you can’t. This is the problem of corporate management. Management will tend to act to maximise profit margins or even the stock price is a bad explanatory model.

coredog64 3y ago

> Companies, regardless of what the Supreme Court says, are not people. What the USSC said was that voluntary associations of people don’t forfeit the rights of the individuals in the association.