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Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged

Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged harshly otherwise. A company uses psychology tricks against its customers(aka Ads/Marketing) making them feel status insecure or a group outsider, totally fine. Actually, those blue bubbles were a great idea, I made sooo much money on stocks. Really feel bad for teenagers though. Boeing can replace their management and the company continues. These big companies are applauded for being amoral because their stock prices go up. At the end of the day it seems there is some power sharing agreement between government, corporations, and to a significantly lesser extent workers/consumers. We only judge that latter group on morals. Maybe we need to collectivize like the Physician Cartel does (American Medical Association), then workers/consumers can collectively be amoral.

thriftwy 3y ago
You don't need to be moral to not drive your business into the ground. To me the whole Boeing debacle is just hilarious to watch from the outside. Like watching a known drug addict to pretend he's not and then pretend he's quitting. Then pretending everyone else is also on drugs because that's literally the only possible order of things.
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. This is not true. Some company’s value proposition is explicitly moral virtue, eg organic food brands. They tend to be family-owned SMO rather than international publicly traded corporations. The issue has more to do with scale and diffusion of responsibility.
- dwallin 3y ago
  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the structure of a public corporation is inherently (and imo, intentionally) amoral? A defining characteristic of modern capitalism is the widespread laundering of responsibility.
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    Incidentally, this is also true for modern democracies.
- CaptainOfCoit 3y ago
  Unless those organic food brands are structured as non-profits, they'll eventually need to make compromises on their value proposition, balanced in a way that shareholders/owners get profits while (hopefully) still provide a net-positive to society. So far, not many for-profit companies have been successful long-term in balancing those two things, as net-positive for society is not strictly necessary for the ultimate goal, generating profits.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
    Citation needed. Do you know what shareholders even are? Are you in such a tech bubble that you can’t comprehend of an organisation delivering surplus value back to shareholders by just…doing something that people want, and charging for it? It sounds like you think that tech startup hypergrowth followed by enshitification is, like, a given, in every situation. It isn’t. MOST businesses don’t work this way. Evidently just the ones that you read about.
    - resource_waste 3y ago
      Race to the bottom. At some point it becomes natural resource extraction. How much do cotton shirts cost now? 1-3$?
  - danaris 3y ago
    In addition to what sibling commenter cqqxo4zV46cp says, you are assuming that either all these companies are publicly traded or a majority of their shareholders see themselves as investors rather than owners. I know nothing particular about the ownership structure of organic food brands, but you cannot simply assume that these things are true. It is perfectly possible for such a brand to be wholly owned by its founders, who maintain an ethos of putting good food and the environment above maximum profit.
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    In the eternal words of Norm McDonald: "no offense but it sounds like some commie gobbledygook".
- resource_waste 3y ago
  These kind of comments make me sad because I remember being younger and believing this stuff. Companies are legal entities, they are amoral. What you are seeing is a leader. I really hope that leader that you believe in, and inspires you to believe and comment such things on HN never fails you.
askvictor 3y ago
> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. Can you elaborate on why you think this is the case? Just 5 minutes ago I was reading this article: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/24/in-the-us-they-think-were-communists-the-70000-workers-showing-the-world-another-way-to-earn-a-living https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/24/in-the-...
- firtoz 3y ago
  I think they may be overly generalising from one kind of company to all kinds of companies
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
    They are. Whenever anyone trots out this line it’s very clear that HN is in many ways a group of knowitall college guys sitting on beanbags and passing around the wizard bong. Usually it’s followed by some misinterpretation of what “fiduciary responsibility” is, something about “shareholders”, and an implication that literally any software developer pulled off the streets of the Bay Area knows more about effectively running a business than literally anyone with an MBA. Companies are organisations. Organisations are run by people. People are more than capable of acting ethically. I have never worked for an organisation that I haven’t seen do something that’s put something else ahead of the bottom line, and not in some silly CSR way. In fact, I routinely make these decisions on behalf of my employer, within the scope of my role, but these are on occasion quite material. I’ve never been clear on how this can be reconciled with the utterly childish view that there’s some invisible hand that requires growth at all costs as soon as a “company” is involved. It really speaks to how much of a bubble a lot of people here are in. I suppose if you paint all organisations with the same brush, it makes it easier to work for Meta or Palantir or whatever.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> there is some power sharing agreement between government, corporations, and to a significantly lesser extent workers/consumers. We only judge that latter group on morals. As in we don't judge government or corporation on morals? Of course people do that.
- vasco 3y ago
  They are doing it in the first sentence of their comment so that can't be the argument!
- notRobot 3y ago
  Systems do not. People do, but those judgements have no impacts.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    So who is the "we"?
- soco 3y ago
  We should however judge them on laws - which are missing at the moment.
indymike 3y ago
> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. If you were to make a Venn diagram of amoral and illegal (including civil malfeasance) have a pretty large overlap. Eventually, the illegal part gets people (even CEOs) sued, fired and/or jailed, but the company might continue if it can afford to pay the legal bills. > These big companies are applauded for being amoral because their stock prices go up. I don't think any investors are applauding the mismanagement at Boeing. I suspect the leadership team there is checking to make sure their "golden parachute" isn't an anvil. Being amoral works for a while, but it is a very poor long term strategy. > Boeing can replace their management and the company continues. Society has decided that closing down large employers is a cure worse than the disease. Closing a misbehaving company sure seems like justice, but to the 43,000 people who depend on that company for a livelihood, and the communities, even small manufacturing towns that the amoral company is keeping alive, well, the network effects are serious. So the consequences are usually in the form of inflicting financial pain to the company, or directly enforcing consequences against the people who do illegal/tortuous things.
- dmix 3y ago
  > Society has decided that closing down large employers is a cure worse than the disease. This sort of thinking is exactly why companies like Boeing get a free pass to do whatever it wants. Local govs protect them like the mob because "jobs" and then Congress panics every time they see the market only has 1-2 options for national security stuff and then reinforces monopolies that slowly eat away at the country's competitive advantage for short term relief. And all were left with is the same small group of untouchable, completely mediocre mega corporations living off past glory when there was actual real competition and risk. Every time you kick the can you just delay getting the medicine you need. Then instead of having a wildly successful company making new products and dominating the global market - which is something employees and govs benefit from via salaries/taxes/local development, foreign competition takes those jobs or protectionism creepingly increases the cost of doing business because a dying corpse is propped up. Then employees get squeezed and suddenly the mega corporation is getting billions in welfare. And the public gets worse and worse products, which impact other industries that depend on them.
swexbe 3y ago
It means regulators must work hader to ban this sort of harmful behaviour. In this particular case, Boeing stock is down 40% yoy. I’m sure the next management will think carefully before comitting the same mistakes.
- Urahandystar 3y ago
  The stock price didn't fall because of how badly they treated their workers it fell because planes started falling out of the sky.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
If you’re going to bank on this view enough to harp on about “amoral companies” in your HN bio, I implore you to consider a more nuanced view. I am a company director. If I committed a “moral” act in this capacity, your absolutist claim is entirely false.
black_13 3y ago
[dead]
dustincoates 3y ago
> Companies are amoral It's a common refrain, but there are no companies acting--there are people within a larger organization who are acting. You say "[a] company uses psychology tricks." Well, no, people within the company have made decisions to do that. There's no way for the company to act on its own.
- soco 3y ago
  The same theory goes further, arguing that whatever consequences the CEO/management would suffer, there will always be others to step up and continue doing the same. My opinion is however that at some point the bad behavior will be deterred, if these consequences are real... so let's just do it asap, at least we can get a petty revenge on those evildoers. Ah, but we cannot do it because we are not lawmakers?
huygens6363 3y ago
> Companies are amoral This is a feature, not a bug. We are system creators and let those systems do the work. We dislike getting our hands dirty and not just physically. Companies are thinly veiled machines ran by grinding oiled up humans as cogs in intricate patterns that seem to produce useful results. This is not a problem in and of itself, but we have to be honest about what we are doing and what the true endgame is. “Powerful” people are just the top cogs in these machines and replaceable like all other cogs. One day we will find out no one runs anything and we have slowly and inadvertently ceded total control to The Machine and have been ceding it for a long, long time already.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  > "Powerful” people are just the top cogs in these machines and replaceable like all other cogs. Maybe on a long enough timescale. In practice people at the top are much harder dislodge regardless of their function, because they wield the most power. Cases like Musk and Altman prove that even boards may be too weak to replace company heads; requiring absurd levels of effort like shareholder votes, legal action, political maneuvering, or all of the above. Worst case one must endure their reign until the CEO dies of old age, not unlike a king.
cduzz 3y ago
horseshit Companies are their leadership. I've worked places where I was actively encouraged to look the other way and I've worked places where I've been actively encouraged to do the right thing. If someone's saying "they gotta be shady because shareholder value, yo" they're looking for an excuse.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_aavaa_ 3y ago
> Companies are amoral No they're not. They very much have a morality, it's just not ours. Some include: Greed is good. Profits first and foremost. Externalities are not our responsibility.

thriftwy 3y ago

You don't need to be moral to not drive your business into the ground. To me the whole Boeing debacle is just hilarious to watch from the outside. Like watching a known drug addict to pretend he's not and then pretend he's quitting. Then pretending everyone else is also on drugs because that's literally the only possible order of things.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. This is not true. Some company’s value proposition is explicitly moral virtue, eg organic food brands. They tend to be family-owned SMO rather than international publicly traded corporations. The issue has more to do with scale and diffusion of responsibility.

dwallin 3y ago
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the structure of a public corporation is inherently (and imo, intentionally) amoral? A defining characteristic of modern capitalism is the widespread laundering of responsibility.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Incidentally, this is also true for modern democracies.
CaptainOfCoit 3y ago
Unless those organic food brands are structured as non-profits, they'll eventually need to make compromises on their value proposition, balanced in a way that shareholders/owners get profits while (hopefully) still provide a net-positive to society. So far, not many for-profit companies have been successful long-term in balancing those two things, as net-positive for society is not strictly necessary for the ultimate goal, generating profits.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  Citation needed. Do you know what shareholders even are? Are you in such a tech bubble that you can’t comprehend of an organisation delivering surplus value back to shareholders by just…doing something that people want, and charging for it? It sounds like you think that tech startup hypergrowth followed by enshitification is, like, a given, in every situation. It isn’t. MOST businesses don’t work this way. Evidently just the ones that you read about.
  - resource_waste 3y ago
    Race to the bottom. At some point it becomes natural resource extraction. How much do cotton shirts cost now? 1-3$?
- danaris 3y ago
  In addition to what sibling commenter cqqxo4zV46cp says, you are assuming that either all these companies are publicly traded or a majority of their shareholders see themselves as investors rather than owners. I know nothing particular about the ownership structure of organic food brands, but you cannot simply assume that these things are true. It is perfectly possible for such a brand to be wholly owned by its founders, who maintain an ethos of putting good food and the environment above maximum profit.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  In the eternal words of Norm McDonald: "no offense but it sounds like some commie gobbledygook".
resource_waste 3y ago
These kind of comments make me sad because I remember being younger and believing this stuff. Companies are legal entities, they are amoral. What you are seeing is a leader. I really hope that leader that you believe in, and inspires you to believe and comment such things on HN never fails you.

askvictor 3y ago

> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. Can you elaborate on why you think this is the case? Just 5 minutes ago I was reading this article: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/24/in-the-us-they-think-were-communists-the-70000-workers-showing-the-world-another-way-to-earn-a-living https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/24/in-the-...

firtoz 3y ago
I think they may be overly generalising from one kind of company to all kinds of companies
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  They are. Whenever anyone trots out this line it’s very clear that HN is in many ways a group of knowitall college guys sitting on beanbags and passing around the wizard bong. Usually it’s followed by some misinterpretation of what “fiduciary responsibility” is, something about “shareholders”, and an implication that literally any software developer pulled off the streets of the Bay Area knows more about effectively running a business than literally anyone with an MBA. Companies are organisations. Organisations are run by people. People are more than capable of acting ethically. I have never worked for an organisation that I haven’t seen do something that’s put something else ahead of the bottom line, and not in some silly CSR way. In fact, I routinely make these decisions on behalf of my employer, within the scope of my role, but these are on occasion quite material. I’ve never been clear on how this can be reconciled with the utterly childish view that there’s some invisible hand that requires growth at all costs as soon as a “company” is involved. It really speaks to how much of a bubble a lot of people here are in. I suppose if you paint all organisations with the same brush, it makes it easier to work for Meta or Palantir or whatever.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> there is some power sharing agreement between government, corporations, and to a significantly lesser extent workers/consumers. We only judge that latter group on morals. As in we don't judge government or corporation on morals? Of course people do that.

vasco 3y ago
They are doing it in the first sentence of their comment so that can't be the argument!
notRobot 3y ago
Systems do not. People do, but those judgements have no impacts.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  So who is the "we"?
soco 3y ago
We should however judge them on laws - which are missing at the moment.

indymike 3y ago

> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. If you were to make a Venn diagram of amoral and illegal (including civil malfeasance) have a pretty large overlap. Eventually, the illegal part gets people (even CEOs) sued, fired and/or jailed, but the company might continue if it can afford to pay the legal bills. > These big companies are applauded for being amoral because their stock prices go up. I don't think any investors are applauding the mismanagement at Boeing. I suspect the leadership team there is checking to make sure their "golden parachute" isn't an anvil. Being amoral works for a while, but it is a very poor long term strategy. > Boeing can replace their management and the company continues. Society has decided that closing down large employers is a cure worse than the disease. Closing a misbehaving company sure seems like justice, but to the 43,000 people who depend on that company for a livelihood, and the communities, even small manufacturing towns that the amoral company is keeping alive, well, the network effects are serious. So the consequences are usually in the form of inflicting financial pain to the company, or directly enforcing consequences against the people who do illegal/tortuous things.

dmix 3y ago
> Society has decided that closing down large employers is a cure worse than the disease. This sort of thinking is exactly why companies like Boeing get a free pass to do whatever it wants. Local govs protect them like the mob because "jobs" and then Congress panics every time they see the market only has 1-2 options for national security stuff and then reinforces monopolies that slowly eat away at the country's competitive advantage for short term relief. And all were left with is the same small group of untouchable, completely mediocre mega corporations living off past glory when there was actual real competition and risk. Every time you kick the can you just delay getting the medicine you need. Then instead of having a wildly successful company making new products and dominating the global market - which is something employees and govs benefit from via salaries/taxes/local development, foreign competition takes those jobs or protectionism creepingly increases the cost of doing business because a dying corpse is propped up. Then employees get squeezed and suddenly the mega corporation is getting billions in welfare. And the public gets worse and worse products, which impact other industries that depend on them.

swexbe 3y ago

It means regulators must work hader to ban this sort of harmful behaviour. In this particular case, Boeing stock is down 40% yoy. I’m sure the next management will think carefully before comitting the same mistakes.

Urahandystar 3y ago
The stock price didn't fall because of how badly they treated their workers it fell because planes started falling out of the sky.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

If you’re going to bank on this view enough to harp on about “amoral companies” in your HN bio, I implore you to consider a more nuanced view. I am a company director. If I committed a “moral” act in this capacity, your absolutist claim is entirely false.

black_13 3y ago

[dead]

dustincoates 3y ago

> Companies are amoral It's a common refrain, but there are no companies acting--there are people within a larger organization who are acting. You say "[a] company uses psychology tricks." Well, no, people within the company have made decisions to do that. There's no way for the company to act on its own.

soco 3y ago
The same theory goes further, arguing that whatever consequences the CEO/management would suffer, there will always be others to step up and continue doing the same. My opinion is however that at some point the bad behavior will be deterred, if these consequences are real... so let's just do it asap, at least we can get a petty revenge on those evildoers. Ah, but we cannot do it because we are not lawmakers?

huygens6363 3y ago

> Companies are amoral This is a feature, not a bug. We are system creators and let those systems do the work. We dislike getting our hands dirty and not just physically. Companies are thinly veiled machines ran by grinding oiled up humans as cogs in intricate patterns that seem to produce useful results. This is not a problem in and of itself, but we have to be honest about what we are doing and what the true endgame is. “Powerful” people are just the top cogs in these machines and replaceable like all other cogs. One day we will find out no one runs anything and we have slowly and inadvertently ceded total control to The Machine and have been ceding it for a long, long time already.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
> "Powerful” people are just the top cogs in these machines and replaceable like all other cogs. Maybe on a long enough timescale. In practice people at the top are much harder dislodge regardless of their function, because they wield the most power. Cases like Musk and Altman prove that even boards may be too weak to replace company heads; requiring absurd levels of effort like shareholder votes, legal action, political maneuvering, or all of the above. Worst case one must endure their reign until the CEO dies of old age, not unlike a king.

cduzz 3y ago

horseshit Companies are their leadership. I've worked places where I was actively encouraged to look the other way and I've worked places where I've been actively encouraged to do the right thing. If someone's saying "they gotta be shady because shareholder value, yo" they're looking for an excuse.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

_aavaa_ 3y ago

> Companies are amoral No they're not. They very much have a morality, it's just not ours. Some include: Greed is good. Profits first and foremost. Externalities are not our responsibility.