"and can't empathize with you" - I don't really understand why such a perception of companies has been regurgitated and reinforced so much in US public, to the point where it's a blank excuse from ever expecting such a thing from a company. It's not true that it can't. The only reason to keep repeating that kind of worldview is to absolve companies behaving in shitty, toxic or downright evil ways.

The law doesn't say companies MUST choose the most profitable choice at every turn, and even explicitly allows for good treatment of customers, community, employees etc as a viable business strategy (even if it's sad that it must be justified in that way).

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scubbo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The only reason to keep repeating that kind of worldview is to absolve companies behaving in shitty, toxic or downright evil ways.

Or...to warn people away from ever expecting compassionate or empathetic behaviour from companies, and remind people not to trust them?

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sublinear an hour ago | parent [-]

I think the only misleading part of this situation is your naive and self-centered definition of "trust", and the assumption that so many others think similarly enough that they need to be warned.

I trust a business to fulfill their obligations as stated in writing for the money paid. I do not trust them in any other way. Nobody should "trust" or depend on undefined behavior. Common sense can only ever be as common as you expect.

	▲	scubbo 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> your naive and self-centered definition of "trust" I never gave one? For what it's worth, I agree with your second paragraph, despite your first being needlessly aggressive.

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awesome_dude 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree that this notion that companies make these decisions is bad, bad on the grounds that it's people working for those companies that make the decisions, they hide themselves away, but the company itself isn't doing anything - is always a human making the decision

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ImPostingOnHN 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the point is that companies are purely legal entities, and as such, cannot feel, much less empathize, simply by virtue of them not being living things

	▲	leptons 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's nonsense. "Companies" are not something non-human, they are run by humans, who do feel, empathize, and are living beings. Without these living-being humans, there would simply be no "company". Now how those humans that run the company behave is another thing - they are free to be greedy assholes, and a lot of them are, and some of them aren't - but that's still a human thing.