Morale in a for-profit company is a virtual concept, it simply does not exist in reality. Claiming it does is likely delusionary or an attempt to hide the truth.

You are implying that running a for-profit company is immoral. Of course you can run a for-profit company in moral and ethical way!

Then it's a for-profit-and-some-other-things. And when there is more than one owner those other things better be defined in a legally binding way or else.

No, yoou can't. Claiming otherwise is pretty naive.

Teach me, please... What is immoral if you open your Limited company and sell your programming services to some customers and make profit doing it?

Make it economically bad times, and the customer a shady actor. Will the company deliberately close and stop offering its services, despite needing to put food on the table? Or will the company just go along and do the coding for shady customer?

Now, put a lot of air in that thought-baloon and you will see how basically every for-profit will end up doing immoral things.

You are wrong! Not every for-profit will end up doing immoral things in this case! Some will move on to do other stuff...

Most people in the developed world are all immoral according this argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsfzLTBuo0

"no ethical consumption under capitalism" is a saying for a reason

"Morals" in any organization large enough for responsibility to be sufficiently diffuse is a virtue statement. Every large organization will sociopathically and amorally advance its KPIs. It just so happens that some organizations are in or adjacent to morals as part of their core business hence why the church comes out looking a little better than Monsanto.

Your argument works just as well for any other company or organisation.

The worst morale failures in history have been perpetrated by governments.

They don't take a moral stand on a lot of things. Most of the large companies in the world are deeply immoral, but we draw the line at bribing, in a culture that encourages it?

I'd argue that it's a WTO problem, let's just cut of all ties to countries where bribing in any form is acceptable, leaving us with what? The Nordic countries and New Zealand?

I'm not arguing that it's not an issue, but what would you have them do exactly? The bribing isn't going to disappear because Microsoft says no. Africa will just be running on Red Star OS and Tecent Cloud.

Microsoft is an American company, so the US can just forbid Microsoft from paying bribes.

Just like the US is using their clout to force people around the world to eg force French companies not to do business with Iran.

> I'd argue that it's a WTO problem, let's just cut of all ties to countries where bribing in any form is acceptable, leaving us with what?

As a compromise, you could target countries in which bribing is de jure _legal_, and worry about de facto later.

>>US can just forbid Microsoft from paying bribes.

That's already the case. It's already illegal for an American company to pay bribes abroad, even if it's "legal" there. The problem is that like many other people said - you just hire a local "consulting" business that handles that for you and your hands are clean.

> The problem is that like many other people said - you just hire a local "consulting" business that handles that for you and your hands are clean.

Just make that illegal, too? And make sure that ignorance is not an excuse before the law. (Something like gross negligence, if you don't check on your subcontractors well enough.)

I wonder how much the citizens of a country rife with low-level corruption would appreciate the US taking the high road and refusing to allow their companies to do business with them.

That's what's already happening with a few countries around the world.