Many people have strong morals, and might resist profit-maximising behaviours, but they will be outcompeted and replaced by less scrupulous people. There is actually no sharp difference between a person and a one-person-company, but: to the degree a company is really a company and not just a person, it is amoral. If you disagree, please point to a moral backstop that would prevent any company from taking immoral acts. A few exist, but they are invariably resisted by the most powerful companies. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

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RandomLensman 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The people and procedures inside are the backstop.

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danlitt 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How many leadership meetings have you been in where some profitable approach was refused on an ethical basis? (rather than the basis that behaving ethically is actually more profitable, which is totally different)

By contrast, how many conversations have you personally had with people working at a company believing a profitable action was firmly unethical, but felt forced to behave that way due to "business realities" or some other whitewashing?

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pferde 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

can be the backstop. The word "can" is doing some extremely heavy lifting here, against corporate practices which dilute and spread guilt and responsibility for immoral decisions so thin, nobody in the decision chain even realizes something immoral has been decided.

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RandomLensman 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Have you ever been in committees approving new products or perhaps certain transactions? These chains aren't necessarily that long. But "can", sure, things could fail etc. and some places are better than others at it.

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ksbd-pls-finish 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is this the same argument as "please point to a moral backstop that would prevent any person from taking immoral acts"? We usually hope that people will be moral, but can't enforce this.

	▲	pferde 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My point was that in big corporations, things are stacked against people wanting to act morally.

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asadotzler 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nursing has been around for a long time and they have not yet had the ethics in their field crushed by some of the biggest forces in our corporate-friendly system. High school teachers too. I could probably come up with a dozen more given half an hour to think about it. Don't give up so easily. People fought hard to get us here.