[grzm]

Thanks for taking the time to put all this down. I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're disagreeing with what I've said above or adding additional context. In particular, I think I've been clear that one must still be "competitive" is something that needs to be taken into account. (That said, I can imagine a company put together with the explicit goal of "going out of business" when it's other, non-profit goals have been reached.) Indeed, I think implicit in what I've been saying is that going into business can (and probably should) include determinations of ethical behavior.

[ArkyBeagle]

And thank you for your thoughts as well. Your last sentence caps it; what I am saying is that there is a broken tool in the toolbox - we should be able to make profit an ethical value - as an estimator of how much good we do on the world - but because accounting practices don't isolate rents ( SFAIK ) from consumer surplus, then that makes profitability a shakier ethical metric.

But yes - the ethics of a company are a serious part of the architecture. Good ethics are of self-interest even more than they are a collective good.