Yea, don't listen to the people actually doing the thing, only listen to the people whose only interest is extracting as much money out of the operation as possible. Of course, companies also essentially make the laws, so "illegal" is a very shallow line.

> don't listen to the people actually doing the thing

They do listen. But people who "do" things don't necessarily see the big picture. And their interested might be misaligned with company mission, let alone shareholder interests.

I recall when I changed my mind on that topic. My employer at the time decided to change the logo. They hired a designer, designer did somewhat radical change, the new logo was accepted. Most employees were furious, new logo is stupid, too playful, it is betrayal of traditions, yada yada. Still management decided to proceed with new logo.

And in a year, old logo looked like we are still in the 80s. Virtually nobody wanted that old logo back.

At least I had a courage to admit I should not demand changes in the areas I don't really understand.

And realistically, if I understood these things, it would be me who does the hiring, not the opposite.

> only listen to the people whose only interest is extracting as much money out of the operation as possible

People who extract money hire people who know who should be listened and who shouldn't. Many people who "do" things really shouldn't be listened on any topic outside of their area of responsibility (a cook may have an opinion how to move goods more efficiently, but it's likely he or she is wrong). I mean, everyone should listened, but their speech should not necessary be followed.

> Of course, companies also essentially make the laws, so "illegal" is a very shallow line.

Well, man, I believe the world is much more complicated than this. There are too many players in the field, and not all of them are companies, and moreover, different companies want different conflicting laws (imagine Apple laws vs Google laws — Apple wants more privacy, Google wants more freedom to deal with data).

So, I believe your world view is too deeply flawed, so there's probably no point to discuss further. Cheers!

I understand your individual points, but not your final conclusion. It gives me the sense that you think maximizing profits for shareholders is "the greater good", moreso than doing what(in the opinion of employees) is right.

I totally understand the logo anecdote and that makes sense, but it's different when the employees opinion differs for moral reasons, I'd say employees ARE more qualified to make those calls than those who are beholden to investors and motivated to maximize profits above all else - IF, that is, your goal is to be moral and not to maximize profits, which is where I'm feeling a disconnect with your posts.

> It gives me the sense that you think maximizing profits for shareholders is "the greater good", moreso than doing what(in the opinion of employees) is right.

This is correct. This is win-win for shareholders and employees.

And if an employee thinks the company should not maximize profits, they can work in non-profit organization.

But why come to for-profit company and demand that company to stop making profits? It does not make sense to me.

> it's different when the employees opinion differs for moral reasons

Moral reasons is a slippery slope. What is moral to one group or people is immoral to other group of people.

I imagine employees may say, we must fight climate change, so we must replace our trucks with electric trucks. This is definitely moral, but this might be not sustainable, and this might be a way to make a company bankrupt. So you express your opinion about trucks, but leave it to the management to decide, whether it can afford it. They often can (because for example good publicity).

> But why come to for-profit company and demand that company to stop making profits? It does not make sense to me.

I agree this is foolish, but at the same time don't blame people for trying. I'm glad these companies have at least a few people applying pressure, potentially making it less profitable for companies to do the 'wrong' thing.

> I imagine employees may say, we must fight climate change, so we must replace our trucks with electric trucks. This is definitely moral, but this might be not sustainable, and this might be a way to make a company bankrupt

At the point we are right now, I'd prefer the company go bankrupt if they can't afford to not destroy the environment. I know it sounds extreme and if this happened at all such companies could cause a considerable economic/societal collapse, but I'd prefer societal collapse over societal collapse and destroyed planet.

> Moral reasons is a slippery slope. What is moral to one group or people is immoral to other group of people.

Overall I think I understand your point more now. I'm curious if you'd agree with the sentiment of the 2 points I just made in this post though. I do feel that just about any moral claim is debatable, but certain things like climate change I'm confident enough in my own beliefs to justify acting on them. The way I see it, we don't know anything 100% for sure, moral or not, so as humans we have to draw the line somewhere and act on the things we have the most conviction for. Other people might have opposing morals and I won't intentionally infringe on their rights but I'll still oppose them on whatever issues we disagree on. I don't claim to be the arbiter of truth but I'm also not going to disregard morality because other people have different views and I might be wrong anyway.

> And their interested might be misaligned with company mission, let alone shareholder interests.

Employee interests are irreconcilably and diametrically opposed to employer and shareholder interests. This is a basic tenet of Marxist thinking. Each faction is trying to get as much from the other as possible.

> But people who "do" things don't necessarily see the big picture.

This is in part because they have no need to because they are not listened to.

> People who extract money hire people who know who should be listened and who shouldn't.

They hire people that advance their interests versus others.

> different companies want different conflicting laws

This is true. There are fights among the ruling class. None of them actually care about anything other than maximum wealth extraction. Human rights as a sales pitch to a consumer base to be discarded at the slightest turbulence.

> So, I believe your world view is too deeply flawed, so there's probably no point to discuss further. Cheers!

Likewise.

It sounds like the Facebook execs agree with you, and through this leak are finding out why they’re wrong. You are right that companies exist to maximize profit at the cost of everything good, but they still rely on employees to get anything done, and employees will only take so much before they take matters into their own hands. A company that expects its employees to act like robots that will do anything the company wants in search of greater profits will find out they are wrong when they push the limits too far.

Well, company might listen to employees requests and treat them well. That would be the reasonable thing to do (at least to be able to pay less; but also because employees might produce important feedback).

However, if company doesn't do that 100% of time, employees do not have moral or lawful rights to sabotage company.

> And if the company decided to go against wishes of salaried employees, that's simply because the company exists to maximize profits of shareholders, not to make employees happy, and managers report to shareholders, not to employees.

Why does everyone act like all employees are golden. A lot of employees want to maximize their own profits too, some without even hard work.

> "Why does everyone act like all employees are golden. A lot of employees want to maximize their own profits too, some without even hard work."

You do make an excellent point there, and I've often wondered at many jobs I've worked in the past why some employees aren't simply fired on the spot for actively avoiding doing any work while at work. It's incredibly demoralizing to those of us who were raised on a "do your job to the absolute best of your ability or go home" mentality. Taking pride in a job well done is a rare thing these days.

Equally demoralizing is the fact that doing your best work these days is a free ticket for most boss-types to abuse your hard work by piling more work on for no extra pay, unlike when I was younger and hard work gained you respect and pay raises.

> Also people leak to reporters when they feel like they are entitled to control the direction of their organization even if they sell all the stocks immediately after the vesting.

Yeah, they do. However you're confused about the organization in question: it's the Human Society or the United States of America (or some other nation), not Facebook, Inc.

> the company exists to maximize profits of shareholders, not to make employees happy

How can you tell?

Just common sense. People invest in companies to get more money, not to lose money. There are exceptions, they are very rare, especially for public companies.

Moreover, CEO is legally obliged to work in the interests of shareholders. That is the law, and that is one of many reasons why corporation flourish in the US: you can buy stocks and be protected from management deciding to waste money listening to each immature employee.

This should be posted automatically every time someone mindlessly parrots the myth about the duty to maximize shareholder value: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

I didn't know that there were no laws requiring companies to act in the interest of shareholders, I guess that's a common myth.

It still seems pretty evident that the power structure at larger companies necessitates that people do act in the interest of investors - as doing so is in their own best interest. I'm no expect and I'm sure more educated people could argue both sides of that though. In the end, I think the behavior of companies that exist is at the very least enough to suggest that the organization of companies in capitalism motivates profit above all else - to the point where horrible acts are committed frequently and are expected from larger corporations

Executives certainly get rewarded for delivering good performance, but it really depends on what the reward structure is. This is where the board of directors comes in - they can set guidelines that dictate what's acceptable and what's not.

For example, they could provide bonuses for making environmental improvements such as reducing pollution, or they could withhold them if the company gets in trouble for exploitation or criminal activity.

> Just common sense. People invest in companies to get more money, not to lose money. There are exceptions, they are very rare, especially for public companies.

Yeah, that's why investors invest, but you (like many people) are forgetting that society allows companies to exist in the first place: to provide social value and increase the general welfare. That's not measured in how much money a company makes for its investors.

If an employee finds themselves working for a company that's hurting society, their primary duty is to stop that harm, not to be circumspect of the investor's profits.

If it’s immoral to leak, why is it moral for employees to have no democratic rights in the workplace?

Because employees voluntarily agreed to these conditions when they signed the contract.

Was it voluntary? If all workplaces offer the same terms, what choice does someone without capital have?

There's an option to create own company.

There's an option to work as freelancer.

Intermediate option is to work in a smaller company where the distance between the entry level employee and the CEO is much smaller, so the changes of being heard are much higher.

There is an option to work in non-commercial organization, which does not have a goal to make profits, so there are more reasons to listen to the employees.

But you can't have your cake and eat it. I. e. pick a company which pays the best because it works efficiently and uses the employees to their best abilities and at the same time works inefficiently because it listens to incompetent employees.

Creating a company requires capital. Freelancing does too, without necessarily offering more control.

Smaller companies can easily be more dictatorial than big ones, small business tyrants are common.

Non-commercial organisations aren’t necessarily any better. They also often don’t pay enough for survival.

I’m asking something fairly simple: why is it moral that the people that do all the work have no control over their working lives?

> "Freelancing does too, without necessarily offering more control."

Sometimes the only "capital" freelancing requires is your knowledge and expertise/wisdom in a particular skillset. I'll agree with "without necessarily" offering more control, but at least in my own personal experiences with freelancing (in IT/computer related work), it offered me a great deal of control, in that if I didn't feel like taking a contract, I simply didn't. It wasn't as if I didn't have other contracts available to fill that void. :)

Most people don’t have highly sought after expertise and gaining it requires capital. Freelancing also requires savings to deal with the potential for contracts to fall through.

You and I can freelance if we choose to. We could only choose to become petty bourgeois because we’re already part of the labour aristocracy, though.

> why is it moral that the people that do all the work have no control over their working lives?

Basic principles of civilized society like respect of private property (which is the company which is owned by shareholders) and respect of contracts, and these principles are more important than employee wishes to play CEO.

> Creating a company requires capital.

So this is the problem. Some people worked hard to obtain that capital. They studied hard, got top notch education, deprived themselves of private life, had very high risk of failure (majority of entrepreneurs fail). And their work resulted in them being shareholders and top management.

While others were smoking marijuana, downshifting, working 9-5 at best, taking long vacations.

And the second ones demand the same rights to control the company. I don't see how that is fair. It is having a cake and eating.

And I have another answer to that. Want to make decisions in the company? Then get hired as CEO. They don't want to hire you as CEO? Then perhaps you are not qualified to do company-wide decision. And if you are not qualified to do company-wide decisions, then probably you should not make these decisions working entry-level jobs.

> Basic principles of civilized society like respect of private property (which is the company which is owned by shareholders) and respect of contracts, and these principles are more important than employee wishes to play CEO.

This alone isn't enough to argue that it's not immoral because the company is their private property. What if Amazon bought up all the farmable land in the country/world and started charging prices that were unaffordable to 90% of people and causing starvation. This is comparable to what's happening, but instead of one company it's multiple companies and instead of food price it's employee conditions

edit: to be clear, I know my point isn't enough to prove it IS immoral either, just that the private property point isn't enough to prove that it isn't. I don't think I'm capable of arguing this argument all the way through, But my opinion probably falls closer to Marx than most people. The only thing I do know for sure is that what we have now isn't working, and if capitalists don't want socialism/communism to take over they better fix things soon.

> What if Amazon bought up all the farmable land in the country/world and started charging prices that were unaffordable to 90% of people and causing starvation.

That would cause anti-monopoly intervention by the government.

> This is comparable to what's happening, but instead of one company it's multiple companies and instead of food price it's employee conditions

What employee condition? Facebook employees who leak these emails are quite rich, perhaps top 1% in the US let alone in the world. Their are unhappy because they want more than money, they also want to "do greater good" as they erroneously view it.

> The only thing I do know for sure is that what we have now isn't working

It does not work perfectly, but it works relatively well. The US is one of the richest countries in the world. Poorest 10-percentile US citizen is way more rich than average person living in a third-world country.

> if capitalists don't want socialism/communism to take over they better fix things soon

I think capitalism is doing fine. The largest problem in the US (I'm not in the US) is partly corrupt election system. E. g. representatives being too dependent on the party because of certain restrictions like limits of how much money a candidate can raise for a campaign. Or lack of ranked choice voting.

Most capital is inherited. No amount of hard work will make up for that.

The very notion of private property exists to maintain that inherited capital, with state violence.

Is that moral? Why?

> Most capital is inherited.

This is a common myth. (I should say, marxist myth.)

> Of those folks, 67.7% were self-made, while 23.7% had a combination of inherited and self-created wealth. Only 8.5% of global high-net-worth individuals were categorized as having completely inherited their wealth.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche...

If you ignore the fact that only those whose families are at least comfortable financially can afford to take the risk necessary to get into a position where they can begin exploiting other workers.

Globally, the vast majority of capital is owned by people who grew up rich.

"why is it moral that the people that do all the work have no control over their working lives?"

This is substantive reason for unions. Though people keep harping about a few dollars wages and health care. Companies love when the union debate is kept to wages and benefits.

Employees run the company and should control it.

> This is substantive reason for unions.

Union exists to improve working conditions.

I never heard of unions protecting working disagreeing with top management policy making, that would be silly.

> Employees run the company

No they don't. They do what they are hired to do. They do not steer it.

> and should control it.

They can just create another company and control it just fine. But then guess what? They will sell their shares on the first opportunity. Because workers don't really need that.

Exactly.

Democratic control over the workplace would make lots of things possible, including lowering profits to increase wages far more than any union dues would cost.

> Democratic control over the workplace would make lots of things possible, including lowering profits

Yes.

> increase wages

No.