We also know from the prison experiments that people have a really hard time not falling into evil behavior when it's expected.
But I agree: neither of those facts absolve every individual in any organization anywhere from doing the wrong thing. Even if someone else would step in to your spot and do the wrong thing, it's still your responsibility.
The book Ordinary Men, based on which there's a Netflix documentary too, follows the story of a bunch of police reservists (basically regular men, in their 50s, from Hamburg, who were too old to be conscripted in the army, so were conscripted in the police for "police duties"). They were regular people, with families and stuff, mostly dockworkers so probably leaned left before the rise of Nazis, but were sent to commit massacres in Poland and they did it. Some struggled, especially after the first ones, but later on it just became normal. Those were regular people, not some crazy Nazi fanatics convinced Jews and Poles were subhuman. One of them convinced himself to target children for murder, because it was merciful - you see, they would die on their own without their parents (which were murdered by his colleagues), so giving them a quick death was mercy. He had kids himself too.
Harrowing stuff, but quite decent proof that humans are capable of anything. Nobody is born a monster, but can become one in the wrong circumstances and through bad personal choices.
He's not at the bottom of some slippery slope, a husk of a human leftover from plunging into darkness. He's on the Ads team doing what he's supposed to: making money from Ads. There's a difference between doing something because it's "what you're told" and doing it because it's the right thing for you to be doing. The right thing for Jerry just happens to be a major inconvenience for Anil.
This is an oversimplified apples-to-chickens kind of comparison, but I worked a cybersecurity job where the right thing for me was keeping the firewall up, but Network/IT administration made it clear they found it inconvenient. After leaving, I learned a Network admin DID take down the firewall and that was a bigger inconvenience. Everyone ultimately wants the same end result and pushing your team's priorities is how you contribute; it doesn't make you "bad."
It'd be a bit different if Jerry was out finding children so he could kill them, dismember them and sew their skin into his clothing. But at least he seems considerate enough that he'd do it in that order.
With the company setting expectations and requirements while people’s job/career hinges on it.
I would consider Jerry as being corporately coerced here and thus more inclined to act immoraly.
it's not, in the sense of social darwinian competition.
If i stand to lose money, or have to sacrifice something in order to be "moral" when my "competitor" doesn't and thus gain an advantage towards me, i cannot be moral.
That's why my rule is: if it's not illegal, it's moral.
If you can steal something and with very high probability not get caught then there’s seemingly a net benefit. However, if you start to steal regularly the odds you get caught are much higher than the most common probability * the number of times you steal. This is true across a wide range of unethical behavior.
Try to remember you lack perfect information and so can’t accurately judge the odds every time. Thus regularly taking low probability risks to your reputation and chances are you’re going to miss judge some of those risks.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
But moving past that I think you've missed some nuance on morals (or more generally social norms) - they help prevent the degenerate race to the bottom you're referencing. Its upsetting but pragmatic to nullify relative advantage by engaging in shitty behavior, but if you're frequently justifying behavior by citing hypothetical competitors then you're just shitting the place up for everyone by starting that race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0dBCooWGo
It has a lot to say about the notion that corporations are beholden to shareholders to maximize profits. Who they're really beholden to are 80s-era corporate raiders who changed corporate culture by enforcing the Shareholder Capitalism model at financial gunpoint.
It’s easy to prove: if true, it would be illegal for companies to do any philanthropy at all. They do, out of some mix of brand building and PR and whatever, but obviously those same principles can be applied to any other policy that seeks to increase NPV of future profits at the expense of this quarter.
Companies can and do pass up revenue opportunities and that is fine and legal.
also, I think a lot of corporations do philanthropy as advertising, hoping it will be in a positive effect on revenue. So, still doing everything for the bottom line
It is still about profits at the end of the day.
This makes zero sense.
And when you use words incorrectly, you don't make any sense.
If the tax rate is 30% and I have 100 dollars in profit, I will have 70 dollars left in the bank. Instead, if I donate 10 dollars and write it off, I will still have to pay 27 dollars in taxes, leaving me with only 63 dollars.
So, it's not just about words. Your comment is fundamentally wrong.
It would still be lower with the philanthropy and tax deductions, rather than not doing the philanthropy and paying more taxes. You can never get a bigger tax reduction than the amount you're putting in. The only way that would be possible is if tax rates exceeded 100%.
Meaning they can sponsor a little league team but most certainly can't raise wages, lower prices, and cut dividends (Ford v. Dodge). In turn, they can't go so far as to knowingly compromise safety in pursuit of saving a few bucks per unit (Grimshaw v. Ford).
Can you summarize this case? I don’t understand why corporations would be prevented from doing this. Couldn’t you always make the case that lowering prices or increasing wages are in the long term interest of shareholders, with the goal of increasing market share?
Boeing execs that got away with negligence that killed people are laughing all the way to their golden toilets.
Companies are 100% free to double wages at random. It is possible shareholders will sue (“everything is securities fraud”), but that’s a dispute about whether the action was in the best interests of shareholders in the long term.
It remains 100% false that companies must maximize corporate profits, especially short term.
Most of philanthropy is free marketing with tax deductible spendings sadly. I.e. smart marketing and creative accounting, so they spend a little to gain much more in return.
It's up to the government (meaning us) to make sure that there are guardrails so this search for profit do not negatively impact society.
And this is exactly what the government is doing with this lawsuit.
Employees are human beings and not property of their employers. As long as you are responsible for your actions outside work, you are also responsible while at work.
People will act based on ethical standards that are derived from their cultural environment. Since the 70s/80s, the American society (and more generally the entire developed world) has been reorganized around ultra-liberal Chicago style view of the economy and especially the Friedman doctrine [0]. It is impossible (or comes with incredible personal cost) for an individual to go against the cultural grain. In this context, personal responsibility can never be a proper substitution to our collective responsibility as citizens.
The silly notion of the heroic individual fighting against corruption, evil doing or whatnot is dangerous. Everyone of us is responsible for the world we live in, not Jerry in marketing. The law that we indirectly vote for and the one who enforce them on our behalf are the only true and meaningful weapons against our societies decadence.
And these actions against Google and Amazon will show were we stand in that fight.
You don't make the right choice with the expectation that it will change anything, but because it's the right thing to do. If you are not willing to make the right choice if may cost you something, you have no right to expect that anyone will do it in any situation. If you are not willing to do that, you choose to believe in a society where everyone is a selfish asshole. In a society like that, there is no such thing as our collective responsibility as citizens.
I have voted in every election I had the opportunity to vote, including union election. And yes I think it matters. But democracy is not just about the procedural token of the election. I am also engaged in my union and in my local town council (and should probably do more).
And there is a wide range of possible actions between being a hero (which is for me the definition of great personal sacrifice for the common good) and a "selfish asshole". I am a realist and don't expect everyone to be a hero. In fact, I expect no one to be hero. I don't want anyone to have to suffer for doing the right thing, that is why I believe in collective action because I don't think personal solution are useful against systematic problems.
But by the tone of your comment, I don't think we are communicating on the same level. So let's agree to disagree and have a very good day.
And those other people would be just as responsible if they fail to refuse.
> It is not true that science marches on in defiance of human will, independent of human will, that just is not the case. But it is comfortable, as I said: it leads to the position that "if I don't do it, someone else will."
> Of course if one takes that as an ethical principle then obviously it can serve as a license to do anything at all. "People will be murdered; if I don't do it, someone else will." "Women will be raped; if I don't do it, someone else will."
-- Joseph Weizenbaum
-- Hannah Arendt, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"
The way you react to incentives determines your moral character. If an action is harmful on its own, it doesn't become any less harmful if you also stand to gain from it.
Companies are amoral and lack human agency, and hence they cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. The responsibility lies with the people making the decisions within the company. And not just the people on the top, but also the people making the day-to-day choices that transform the strategic decisions into reality.
(See also: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil)