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From a business perspective, wouldn't taking these issues seriously harm growth? What sort of fines and punishment are making sure invectives are aligned with g
by Taek 1y ago
From a business perspective, wouldn't taking these issues seriously harm growth? What sort of fines and punishment are making sure invectives are aligned with good behavior? Is any of the management going to jail?
If you want the largest businesses in the world to be responsible for the harm they bring to society, you need to make sure the management and profit motives are both aligned with taking on that responsibility. The more responsible companies of the world axiomatically don't get to be the biggest, because they will be outcompeted by the companies that choose to not be responsible.
- watwut 1y ago> From a business perspective, wouldn't taking these issues seriously harm growth? Yes keeping things ethical and legal harms growth. Or otherwise said, absent enforcement, dishonest, unethical and illegal operations grow faster and eventually kill honest legal competition. That is WHY we need laws and enforcement. That is why it is necessary to complain and punish executives and bad actors companies.
- yoyohello13 1y agoThis is why it blows my mind how anybody can actually believe privatizing healthcare, or schools, or any public good can possibly be a good idea. Like have they see the shit for-profit companies have done? It’s like they are living in a different world.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ultrarunner 1y agoIt’s probably because they’ve seen the shit that government has done. The problem ends up being not who does it, but how much power they have.
- yoyohello13 1y agoAt this point, private companies have more power than some governments. How long before we are back to company towns with private security forces? We are trading elected officials, who may be corrupt, with unelected officials, who are corrupt by design.
- watwut 1y agoIf you mean Trump and republicans, yes. But majority of harm they cause currently consists of destroying what worked quite well.
- moolcool 1y ago> From a business perspective, wouldn't taking these issues seriously harm growth? Maybe if they were smaller and scrappier. They're big enough now that they can just purchase any viable competition and turn it into profit-maximizing sludge. But that's just the free market at work, baby!
- anonymars 1y agoInstagram (2012) and WhatsApp (2014) being prime examples
- bix6 1y agoI wonder if Zuck has always been this unethical or if he’s grown into it more through the years. Even in the personal domain he seems horrible eg stealing Kauai birthright land for his mega mansion.
- torben-friis 1y agoRemember Facebook’s original use? I guess that’s an answer.
- bix6 1y agoyeah but I consider that more weird / pathetic vs this which is blatantly anti-ethical
- realz 1y agoThey have one goal: $$ Haven’t we learned that ethics are subjective.
- bix6 1y agoI’m struggling to see a subjective version of this that is ethical? Profit maximizing sure but that’s not ethical if you’re knowingly harming others. So I guess you’re helping your shareholders which is the ethical thing to do since the benefit to them outweighs the harm to the kids?
- realz 1y agoA lot of people failed to see Hitler’s point of view as well. That didn’t stop the trains though. One can never tell what twisted logic they’re using to justify their actions.
- ergsef 1y agoI think this reflects on a lifetime of highlighting "think of the children" versus abusing women, stalking, etc. being swept under the rug. "Creepy" behaviour towards someone can actually deprive them of a sense of safety and cause permanent harm. As a culture we downplay that as weird or silly instead of scary and invasive.
- yndoendo 1y agoThis echoes the past when the tobacco industry performed such tactics. Only difference is that Meta has the means to produce a non-toxic product but chooses toxicity. Don't worry, Zuckerberg to invest countless billions into the USA market, so the toxicity will be welcomed with open arms by those in power to stop it.
- masklinn 1y ago> This echoes the past when the tobacco industry performed such tactics. Or Monsanto. Or GM / Ethyl Corp. Or Purdue. Or... Purdue is a pretty close match I think: they didn't have to be completely bereft of ethics and actively harmful to society, they chose to.
- pfortuny 1y agoBeing the owner of a business does not exempt you from being a human being. Ethics apply. A person is more valuable than a company.
- yoyohello13 1y agoHistory has unequivocally proven that the majority of big business leaders don’t give a shit about ethics. In fact, they will come up with whole new ideologies to justify their behavior (see effective altruism).
- latexr 1y agoIt’s worrying that we have to keep repeating this so often. The amount of people defending abhorrent behaviour with a version of “the CEO has a fiduciary duty to shareholders” boggles the mind.
- nonameiguess 1y agoEspecially in the case of Meta when Zuck has set up share structure to give him majority control as long as he's alive and doesn't sell. He's about the only exec out there of a public company that doesn't have to answer to anyone else and can do the more ethical but less profitable thing. It's not like Meta at half its current share value and Zuck with "only" $130 billion net worth instead of his current $260 billion doesn't leave a viable company and perfectly good lifestyle for him and his family and whatever else he cares about.
- wahnfrieden 1y agoThe point is that we should seek more robust systemic change than petitioning business owners to be better people against their best interests (finance, power). Appealing without any leverage is a losing game and describes where we are at currently
- latexr 1y ago> The point is that we should seek more robust systemic change than petitioning business owners to be better people against their best interests (finance, power). No, that is not the point being raised by the majority of the “fiduciary duty” defenders. But even if we concede that’s what some are arguing for, that is such a bizarre stance to take: “we want the same thing, and but I’ll criticise you and shill in defense of the CEO because the way you’re doing it isn’t extreme enough”. That is absurd and it makes no sense to think the person criticising the CEO doesn’t also realise that more robust systemic change is desired and necessary. But you can’t do that all at once.
- lossolo 1y agoExactly this. Laws would need to change from the sole goal of maximizing shareholder profit to balancing profit with social consequences, in order to minimize harm to society. Then, any company that is acting irresponsibly could be sued and eliminated from the market, leaving only the "good" players.
- jjulius 1y ago>From a business perspective, wouldn't taking these issues seriously harm growth? The fact that we would prioritize a business' constant growth over the impact to child safety is garbage. This argument, this sentiment... they need to die.
- wahnfrieden 1y agoYou need a much bigger and systemic change than a new CEO for that
- anon84873628 1y agoI think the comment is saying exactly that "we" need to have regulation that sets the correct priorities, because a profit-motivated business/market cannot do so itself. The tendency to trade off the common good for individual short term gain is explained by game theory.
- Obscurity4340 1y agoBut they use their "free speech" in the form of money to lobby and set the agenda for any such regulations. Citizens and public institutions cant possibly compete with that
- NooneAtAll3 1y agoyou never know if you don't try
- HankStallone 1y agoThat's how I took it too. For this to work, the penalties would have to be large enough to make the harmful actions unprofitable for the company (and its executives). Usually, fines given out by government regulators (who are sometimes people who used to work for the industry or will in the future) are small enough to be considered part of the cost of doing business. For instance, in 2009 Pfizer was fined $2.3B for promoting off-label use of a few drugs and paying kickbacks to health care providers to push them. That year they reported $50B in revenues, so the largest health care settlement in history (at the time) probably didn't even put them in the red. If fines for law-breaking by corporations were large enough to bankrupt the company, and if executives did prison time as well, that would be an actual incentive to obey the laws.
- the8472 1y ago> What sort of fines and punishment are making sure invectives are aligned with good behavior? Assuming you meant incentives, how about collecting fines in voting shares?
- tehjoker 1y agoWhy don't we simply make sure that workers and the government have major stakes in companies so that incentives are more aligned with social needs?
- largbae 1y agoThe people suppressing the research already have major stakes. What is lacking is any consequence for them at all.
- tehjoker 1y agoThey do not have the same stake in a healthy society as the rest of us. I agree with consequences for them, but the entire model is flawed. It is motivating a small number of people to claim as much for themselves as possible with little serious stake holding by the broader society other than other rich people. There has to be more democracy introduced.
- Nasrudith 1y agoThat would just spread the corruption around along with the rewards as things which make them more money reward them and things which make less effectively punish them. Not too much of a difference quantitatively for workers (job security is negatively impacted by the company doing poorly). That would mean that the government is basically 'bribing itself' whenever it does anything that is aligned with the company. That is the opposite of what you would want. Social needs is a nebulous enough term that it outright scares me imagining what twisted definitions of it would arise naturally from sincere attempts to promote it, let alone cynical abuses. Imagine a religious fundamentalist defining 'social needs'. Horrors like 'we should work to keep kids in the closet for social cohesion' and honestly thinking that it is the right thing to do.
- tehjoker 1y agoOur current political system already privileges these people. What are you worried about with expanded democratic rights? It would counterbalance them. A concern with social rights is a step up from narrow concern with economic rights, since it enables the rich to just oppress everyone else. At least you can contest things instead of being ruled dicatorially by the market.
- libraryatnight 1y agoThis mode of thought is absolute cancer.