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> Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation. They're both just engaged in business. This is what's wrong with the current overl

> Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation. They're both just engaged in business. This is what's wrong with the current overly capitalist system. Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience, and externalise whatever they please to consumers and the environment. And you could even argue they are 'forced' to do so by due diligence legislation. If we let this continue there will be no world left to fix. We have to change the game. I'm not saying we should go full communism. Capitalism isn't bad but there needs to be a balance between business and society with actual accountability (rather than the current 'green' initiatives basically just being PR without any kind of enforcement). It can't be all about money. I think for US culture it's hard to imagine doing this but here in Europe society has always had this balance, at least in most countries. Initiatives like RoHS, GDPR, DSA/DMA are often called anticompetitive but we are actually trying to improve things for the benefit of society, not just the shareholders.

lamontcg 3y ago
> Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience I don't think companies are going to form a conscience any time soon. We need to deal with the fact that they're best viewed as being inherently sociopathic and regulate them effectively.
- Gormo 3y ago
  Perhaps a better alternative would be to stop anthropomorphising abstractions, and not try to weirdly attribute intentionality, independent agency, or sociopathy to the same thing we're acknowledging is incapable of conscience because it isn't a person. Corporations are organizational models employed by humans in pursuit of human motivations. They are not entities unto themselves. Everything is humans, all the way down.
  - letsdothisagain 3y ago
    Corporate personhood means that legally they are. If we stripped that away and let the board of governors go to jail for doing blatantly illegal stuff, then they might stop being sociopathic. I'd also like a pony.
    - Gormo 3y ago
      Corporate officers who commit criminal violations in the conduct of their job are already legally liable for their behavior. The corporation they work for might also incur liability under the law of agency and vicarious liability. Corporate personhood applies primarily to private law -- contract liability, civil torts, financial obligations and the like.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      No, they'd still be sociopathic. They'd do the absolute minimum they have to do under the law, and no more than that - exactly as a sociopath would if watched by someone with the ability to hurt them. Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither. This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies.
      - Gormo 3y ago
        > Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither. And, for the same reason, they have no capacity for autonomous thought and action. Corporations are just organizational models for coordinating human activity, but all of the agency still originates with individuals, because there's nothing else that it could originate with. All malicious acts you are attributing to corporations actually originate from the malicious intent of individuals who are merely using the corporation as an organizational model. > This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies. Keeping organized forms of social coordination "small and toothless" is inherently antagonistic to the concept of society itself -- the proper solution is to constrain malicious behavior without interfering with non-malicious behavior, regardless of how that behavior is coordinated or formalized. There's also a paradox here, in that I have not seen any mechanism proposed for combating the implicit sociopath of one kind of organization that doesn't rely on creating even greater concentrations of monopoly power in the hands of an essentially equivalent form of organization.
fsflover 3y ago
If you want to dedicate your company to a purpose over profit, it should be something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation
usefulcat 3y ago
It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect. If they could make just as much money (or more) without doing any of those other things, they absolutely would, and any company that wouldn't do the same would eventually be put out of business via competition, barring some kind of external intervention, say from the state. If you want companies to grow a conscience, you're first going to have to figure out how to change their incentives, which means changing the environment in which they operate.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  The mechanism we have for this is supposed to be competition. If one company is screwing you over, you patronize a different one. This, of course, doesn't work in consolidated markets, and so what is necessary is for consolidated markets to be deconsolidated.
- elcritch 3y ago
  > It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect. What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits. They're made up of humans too, and usually it's some executive making a final call. There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit. The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO. Corporations can and should also be held to account legally and ethically for being good stewards of public interests in addition to profitability. In the end they're just tools for organization, and a rather effective one, but they're still run and accountable to humans and human values.
  - usefulcat 3y ago
    > What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits. Do corporations do other things besides make profits? Yes; I previously said as much. The point is about why they do the things they do. > There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit. Perhaps in the short term, if they can afford to economically, but isn't this kind of like the exception that proves the existence of the rule? Is Tesla a car company that wants to make great cars and help reduce carbon emissions for the benefit of all? Maybe, but their primary goal must be profits, because they can't do any of the other stuff if they aren't profitable. > The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO. I disagree that it encourages that behavior. If you want to change that behavior then an accurate understanding of the current state of affairs is a necessary prerequisite. Like if you're going to say, "I want <insert company here> to do less of X and more of Y", then surely your first order of business must be to understand why they are doing X in the first place and not so much of Y (hint: it's usually because of profits). In the case of corporations, because being profitable is necessarily the first priority, it follows that the most effective way to change the behavior of a corporation is pretty much anything that affects their profit, as opposed to appealing to the moral/ethical/whatever values of their leadership. If you want ethical corporate leadership, then you have to make it unprofitable to be unethical.
d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
Most senior leaders I've experienced are preserving profits so they can maintain headcount. Is it without conscience to make sure thousands of people retain jobs? Even if it's ego driven it's still mutually beneficial.
donw 3y ago
"Capitalist" is a nonsense term that no longer carries any meaning. There is a revolving door between government and corporate leadership. There is no functional difference between corporate America and public service at this point in time. One does not rule the other: they are one and the same. Social media companies have entire teams run by Federal law enforcement. Federal leadership draws its senior staff from companies like Google. It is impossible to conduct business without thoroughly invasive involvement of multiple layers of government telling you what you can do, how you must do it, tracking your actions to ensure you comply, and levying obscene punishments if you don't. For this "service" you are charged a level of tax that would make the Pharaohs green with envy.
OCASMv2 3y ago
Hard not to act as they do when its consumers happily reward them with their money.
- mptest 3y ago
  If only there were someone, or some institution that could think more long term than mindless consumers. We could call it a Governing board or something!
dantheman 3y ago
Capitalism is a system of private property and voluntary exchange. There's tons of accountability - people can stop buying and interacting with these companies.
- MerManMaid 3y ago
  Honest question, can you provide a single example of a company that came to dominate an industry only to then go out of business purely because people chose to stop buying and interacting with them? I honestly can't think of a single example of a monopoly, cartel, or industry leading company which has ever crumbled due to everyone collectively deciding not to do business with them. (without some sort of government regulation or technological advancement facilitating the change)
- dpkonofa 3y ago
  This isn't always the case. Some of these companies own and run the only methods of doing certain things. There are some places, for example, where you can't use cash to pay for things. That means that, in those places, you cannot stop buying and interacting with Visa and Mastercard, for example.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
sunshinerag 3y ago
What is a "overly" capitalist system? Where we would find companies with a conscience for example? Argentina?

lamontcg 3y ago

> Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience I don't think companies are going to form a conscience any time soon. We need to deal with the fact that they're best viewed as being inherently sociopathic and regulate them effectively.

Gormo 3y ago
Perhaps a better alternative would be to stop anthropomorphising abstractions, and not try to weirdly attribute intentionality, independent agency, or sociopathy to the same thing we're acknowledging is incapable of conscience because it isn't a person. Corporations are organizational models employed by humans in pursuit of human motivations. They are not entities unto themselves. Everything is humans, all the way down.
- letsdothisagain 3y ago
  Corporate personhood means that legally they are. If we stripped that away and let the board of governors go to jail for doing blatantly illegal stuff, then they might stop being sociopathic. I'd also like a pony.
  - Gormo 3y ago
    Corporate officers who commit criminal violations in the conduct of their job are already legally liable for their behavior. The corporation they work for might also incur liability under the law of agency and vicarious liability. Corporate personhood applies primarily to private law -- contract liability, civil torts, financial obligations and the like.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    No, they'd still be sociopathic. They'd do the absolute minimum they have to do under the law, and no more than that - exactly as a sociopath would if watched by someone with the ability to hurt them. Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither. This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies.
    - Gormo 3y ago
      > Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither. And, for the same reason, they have no capacity for autonomous thought and action. Corporations are just organizational models for coordinating human activity, but all of the agency still originates with individuals, because there's nothing else that it could originate with. All malicious acts you are attributing to corporations actually originate from the malicious intent of individuals who are merely using the corporation as an organizational model. > This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies. Keeping organized forms of social coordination "small and toothless" is inherently antagonistic to the concept of society itself -- the proper solution is to constrain malicious behavior without interfering with non-malicious behavior, regardless of how that behavior is coordinated or formalized. There's also a paradox here, in that I have not seen any mechanism proposed for combating the implicit sociopath of one kind of organization that doesn't rely on creating even greater concentrations of monopoly power in the hands of an essentially equivalent form of organization.

fsflover 3y ago

If you want to dedicate your company to a purpose over profit, it should be something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation

usefulcat 3y ago

It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect. If they could make just as much money (or more) without doing any of those other things, they absolutely would, and any company that wouldn't do the same would eventually be put out of business via competition, barring some kind of external intervention, say from the state. If you want companies to grow a conscience, you're first going to have to figure out how to change their incentives, which means changing the environment in which they operate.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
The mechanism we have for this is supposed to be competition. If one company is screwing you over, you patronize a different one. This, of course, doesn't work in consolidated markets, and so what is necessary is for consolidated markets to be deconsolidated.
elcritch 3y ago
> It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect. What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits. They're made up of humans too, and usually it's some executive making a final call. There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit. The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO. Corporations can and should also be held to account legally and ethically for being good stewards of public interests in addition to profitability. In the end they're just tools for organization, and a rather effective one, but they're still run and accountable to humans and human values.
- usefulcat 3y ago
  > What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits. Do corporations do other things besides make profits? Yes; I previously said as much. The point is about why they do the things they do. > There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit. Perhaps in the short term, if they can afford to economically, but isn't this kind of like the exception that proves the existence of the rule? Is Tesla a car company that wants to make great cars and help reduce carbon emissions for the benefit of all? Maybe, but their primary goal must be profits, because they can't do any of the other stuff if they aren't profitable. > The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO. I disagree that it encourages that behavior. If you want to change that behavior then an accurate understanding of the current state of affairs is a necessary prerequisite. Like if you're going to say, "I want <insert company here> to do less of X and more of Y", then surely your first order of business must be to understand why they are doing X in the first place and not so much of Y (hint: it's usually because of profits). In the case of corporations, because being profitable is necessarily the first priority, it follows that the most effective way to change the behavior of a corporation is pretty much anything that affects their profit, as opposed to appealing to the moral/ethical/whatever values of their leadership. If you want ethical corporate leadership, then you have to make it unprofitable to be unethical.

d0gsg0w00f 3y ago

Most senior leaders I've experienced are preserving profits so they can maintain headcount. Is it without conscience to make sure thousands of people retain jobs? Even if it's ego driven it's still mutually beneficial.

donw 3y ago

"Capitalist" is a nonsense term that no longer carries any meaning. There is a revolving door between government and corporate leadership. There is no functional difference between corporate America and public service at this point in time. One does not rule the other: they are one and the same. Social media companies have entire teams run by Federal law enforcement. Federal leadership draws its senior staff from companies like Google. It is impossible to conduct business without thoroughly invasive involvement of multiple layers of government telling you what you can do, how you must do it, tracking your actions to ensure you comply, and levying obscene punishments if you don't. For this "service" you are charged a level of tax that would make the Pharaohs green with envy.

OCASMv2 3y ago

Hard not to act as they do when its consumers happily reward them with their money.

mptest 3y ago
If only there were someone, or some institution that could think more long term than mindless consumers. We could call it a Governing board or something!

dantheman 3y ago

Capitalism is a system of private property and voluntary exchange. There's tons of accountability - people can stop buying and interacting with these companies.

MerManMaid 3y ago
Honest question, can you provide a single example of a company that came to dominate an industry only to then go out of business purely because people chose to stop buying and interacting with them? I honestly can't think of a single example of a monopoly, cartel, or industry leading company which has ever crumbled due to everyone collectively deciding not to do business with them. (without some sort of government regulation or technological advancement facilitating the change)
dpkonofa 3y ago
This isn't always the case. Some of these companies own and run the only methods of doing certain things. There are some places, for example, where you can't use cash to pay for things. That means that, in those places, you cannot stop buying and interacting with Visa and Mastercard, for example.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

sunshinerag 3y ago

What is a "overly" capitalist system? Where we would find companies with a conscience for example? Argentina?