I didn't see a value judgement in GP's post, more a highlighting of the conflict between structuring corporations around maximizing shareholder value on one hand and society placing life or death value on full employment on the other.

Where you land on how that conflict should resolve is going to depend on your views.

Full employment is not a goal. Our society's goal is to ensure people have access to goods and services. Unfortunately, that's hard to optimize for, so we optimize for full employment as a proxy.

> Full employment is not a goal. Our society's goal is to ensure people have access to goods and services. Unfortunately, that's hard to optimize for, so we optimize for full employment as a proxy.

I disagree, at least if democracy is also a goal. Full employment gives individual citizens economic power to go with their political power. Merely "ensur[ing] people have access to goods and services" turns them into economically disempowered dependents.

In the USA, the 65-and-over age group appears to have significantly more political power than the 18-to-24 age group, even though the latter group is much more likely to be employed. The explanation seems straightforward: older people vote at significantly higher rates than young people. In fact the economic dependency of older people seems to be a rallying cry for considering their interests; both parties will invoke "grandmothers living on fixed incomes" when they want to promote or oppose some broader policy.

Eh, you're incorrectly doing a temporal shift here....

The older group were workers. They earned income. They invested it, and now are attempting to maintain control of their investments with the last power they have, voting.

Those same young people that have jobs now, that put it in retirement, will be the old people investing in the future.

A smoking engine has a cost, it's just not an immediate dollar amount. The cost is impact to surrounding environment, and public health.

I believe the same cost also applies to companies. There can be (and almost always is) an environmental, societal, etc cost.

The goal of society should be to maximize employment.

Really? I'd rather maximize quality of life.

No, it shouldn't. The goal of society is to maximize access to goods and services. Employment is just a simpler proxy to optimize for, but there's a difference between the two.

Is there any particular reason you think this should be the goal of society?

In the realm of work, the goal should be (is) to maximize productivity.

The problem is that we haven't come up with a way to properly pay people in a system where productivity has increased past the point that "full employment" - in the traditional sense - is no longer needed, or possible.

Everyone is employed in a hunter gatherer society. Do you find that preferable?

Surely the (unattainable) ideal should be full unemployment?

No, the goal of society should be to maximize wealth, which can then be distributed as we see fit.

If companies had to maximize employment they would need to automate fewer things, which would lower productivity and result in less wealth being produced. The entire society would end up being poorer.

This happened in the Communist bloc within living memory and we don't need to make the same mistake again. It's not a coincidence that the countries with the best quality of life are the ones that allow corporations to pursue wealth creation over other goals and then redistribute the wealth through taxation and social benefits. If you want to redistribute wealth it's good to actually have some wealth.