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0 pointsunderlipton3mo ago0 comments

Pushing back for the sake of conversation: corporations are amoral, because they're containers for business activities. Those activities don't necessarily inherit that amorality, though. A business decision is made by a person, and so is a task undertaken or okayed by an employee; those can therefore be subject to measures of morality. Because people involved in a company have the capacity for moral or immoral action, it is in the company's best interest to monitor and correct behavior.

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the_af3mo ago

You're right.

I don't think it's a benefit to society that corporations behave like amoral sociopaths. It should be in their interest to correct that behavior.

However, my point is this (slightly exaggerated) timeline:

1. "Diversity makes us stronger! Discrimination is bad! Power to women! Respect gender identities! Stop fake news!".

2. Go do all these trainings to improve yourself on those topics. We mandate this because we care, it's our inner moral fiber!

3. (election happens, government changes)

4. Actually, forget all of the above. The previous administration forced us, we now believe otherwise and we're decommissioning all those programs. Sorry we forced you!

So in the end, no value a corporation espouses is genuine, unless it's making money. So all those trainings? Fake. All those "values"? Fake. Individuals within the company may care, but the company as a whole doesn't (and let's face it, the CEO and board don't either, and never did).

If we're feeling charitable, we could argue any given company reflects the current (corporate) consensus about what's good/safe for business and for society, but always dressed in the language of "we genuinely believe this, it's heartfelt, and we're also trend setters because we care!". It's this last part that is 100% fake. At best they do what's safe for the current social/business climate; nothing is "heartfelt". If it was heartfelt, they would stand up to the bullies instead of saying "we never believed it, it was forced on us by the past evil administration!".

ethbr13mo ago

> So in the end, no value a corporation espouses is genuine, unless it's making money.

This is the ultimate rub.

There are constructions that corporations can implement in order to enforce values, but they fundamentally mean giving up control.

Because at root, control by people prioritizing making money above all else is what causes these decisions to be reevaluated. Aka when following principles has a serious financial cost.

Public benefit corp, non-profit, independent board, etc. are options.

Google, Facebook, OpenAI... at this point it shouldn't surprise anyone when 'you were saying something about best intentions' goes awry.

Hell, OpenAI's wriggling to get out of its charter (and honestly, its difficulty in doing so) and NewsCorp's attempt to forcibly assign control counter to trust planning should point out that 'Yes, you can make it harder to be evil.'

Google just didn't.

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