[tomasien]

Good points but "where do you draw the line? It's not clear" is fair observation but not a conclusion. You DO have to draw the line and just because where to draw it isn't clear doesn't absolve you (or anyone!) from drawing it.

[npunt]

Yeah exactly - this isn't a minor inconvenience, it's a fundamental part of being in society.

I appreciate OP's point about lack of clarity, because yes, the capitalist game has nothing to say about anything except following whatever you can get away with. But that narrow game is being played in a much broader context of society that exists because of a broader social contract and set of values which keeps everything running.

The reasonable answer to where you draw the line is: when something is no longer compatible with your value system. And if that's not clear, the issue is that you haven't yet spent enough time defining your values. That's the thing to talk about, research, consider, ask advice on, etc. People having a solid, well-tested personal value system is critical to society's function, because that informs how groups of people like companies then operate, and so forth on up.

To make a bit of a broader (and possibly controversial) point on this, we're in a situation right now where software engineering and finance are two fields with the highest leverage in society, yet these fields are some of the least concerned with values/ethics, from the point of view of both the education and experiences people gain in these fields. Small parts of these fields may care a great deal about values/ethics, but broadly speaking the situation we're in is "with great power comes great unawareness of responsibility." It's weird and scary.

The result of this lack of concern is that many powerful people have under-developed and unsophisticated personal value systems, and consequently do not know what to do in ethically nuanced, important situations like what OP is bringing up. There's a whole lot of people in tech waking up to this realization nowadays. It'd be nice if we were able to fix this at the source and raise the next generation right, rather than flail around rediscovering this every few years when yet another societal crisis hits.

[altonzheng]

Well said. I’ve just started really thinking about this. Although I would venture that people naturally develop value systems as they get older, whatever field they are in. It’s just that many of our existing institutions set you up to create values based on self interest and wealth. I think it’s unfortunate. But then again, can I really say my values are superior?

[npunt]

Good point, we definitely develop value systems as we get older as we move away from self-oriented to other-oriented thinking.

As far as which value system is better, I think the nature of developing a sophisticated value system is to be able to make judgments about values and come to these conclusions based on research, careful consideration, and testing against issues. So if you're spending time considering your values, you're inherently going to be judging those of others in the process, and altering your values until you get to the point where you feel yours are better. But of course, its also incumbent on you to remain open-minded to the idea you are wrong and to be honest in the face of new information.

[ace_of_spades]

Thank you for your insightful comment!

I agree with you on most points but would like to add another aspect to it. While I agree that we have somewhat of a personal responsibility to be moral and do the right thing, the pressures in a market do make it very hard to follow through on our values. If you are refusing someone else is taking the job. Thus, it is also a collective problem and not only an individual. In a perfect world, we would have an effecatious rule system which could help us enforce generally shared values more effectively than what we have right now.

I think you allude to this point when you write about “software engineering and finance” as important fields. Ideally, we would be able to create incentives in these whole professions/markets that are aligned with societies interests, however, I think that requires a shift in perspective. Away from anonymous (unregulated) markets towards treating these fields more like coherent self-governed entities with desired values and goals which are incentivized by the rules that are set in place. For that to work we would need a very flexible and efficient regulatory system though that is more akin to science than the politics we have right now. People who come up with new ideas would need to be able to propose and self-regulate new fields that may be able to improve societies well-being. Let people set targets for themselves and demonstrate their value to society as part of doing business. That’s how science has worked so well for the last couple of centuries.

Hope those rough thoughts make sense to someone :)

[npunt]

Definitely there's a massive misalignment of what has value in markets and what has value in society, because only some roles and industries are positioned to capture the value they create. Many roles, especially those very human roles of caregivers, teachers, etc, tend to be undervalued because their particular effects are either long term or simply unquantifiable.

I'm not sure what system or frameworks we need in politics to better align these, perhaps your ideas are a rough sketch for them.

I'd like to push back on one point you mentioned: that if an individual refuses to take a job, someone will take their place.

We know in startups and in any organization in general that talent is a key ingredient in success, we talk about it all the time and in many high leverage positions we're looking to get the best of the best, because we know how much of a multiplier effect they have on product, culture, etc. Yet this idea persists that to not participate with your talent means someone else - presumably with equal talent - will take the role instead. This contradicts what we know about hiring for positions that are very talent-driven.

An alternative take is that if talented people refuse to take a position, the available people remaining will be less talented and less able to execute the (negative to society) plan. If the firm hiring them has high standards, then the position may remain unfilled for a long time (another net positive for society). Market forces may increase the salary of that job, but that doesn't mean it will be filled by really talented folks, because if you know talented folks, they typically have their pick of what type of work they want to do and do not pursue solely the highest paying jobs.

[ace_of_spades]

Thanks for your comment! I didn’t notice the answer so my reply is unfortunately pretty late.

I agree with your last point, there is definetly a marginal value that is “lost” if highly talented people refuse a job. However, a general question is how large this effect is going to be. If we are talking about an “evil” company it might be pretty high because not too many people are interested in working there. If we talk about a company like Apple it’s probably pretty low... So, I agree that there is an individual lever that people can use. People leaving/deinstalling fb in masses is a great example of that.

Still, I think the collective component shouldn’t be neglected as this is the only thing which can solve this problem for good (i.e., everything else will be too slow and inefficient)

[Draiken]

The problem I see is that there are literally zero incentives for a company to do that. A company is a "being" that only has one purpose: profits.

Even if your company does try to stick with a moral compass, because of how capitalism works, every other company will swallow you.

I'm not a finance expert, so I always had this question in my mind. Is there any way to avoid that? I can't think of a way to do that without changing the fundamental purpose of a company.

[npunt]

It's only a recent notion that profit maximization is a company's sole purpose, and what that means differs a great deal based on whether you're trying to maximize short-term profits vs long-term. The longer term you get, the more you have to consider things that are beyond the scope of immediate profit maximization.

Historically there are many examples of companies that have considered their shareholders, employees, and communities as part of their duties. A famous example being Ford, but many companies consider a broader purpose beyond profits, and say so in their annual filings as to what types of investors they want and what to expect.

And to get technical, companies have a duty to their shareholders, not profits, because shareholders have the ability to fire the leadership of the company. It so happens that most shareholders primarily want profits, but this isn't universal.

You can also see examples of having legal responsibility be beyond just shareholders, such as in the bylaws added by B-corps which allow carve-outs for different bottom lines. There's a lot going on in the space.

I also wouldn't assume that if you fail to solely pursue profits, that you will therefore be signing your death sentence. That's both an assumption of efficient markets (they aren't), and that a given industry is always going to reward a business that seeks the most profit. Profit does help companies acquire or beat others, but the pursuit of profit is something that customers and shareholders may not always reward in a given industry.

[Draiken]

I agree with pretty much all your points, however you are talking about exceptions.

The rule is still profits first.

I really wish our entire society would change to care about humans and not money but I can't see it ever happening.

People still prefer buying cheap things from China labour because it's convenient. The individuals don't care (or don't care enough) and the companies are a reflection of that. As you said, shareholders are the ones in control of the company but the consumers will determine their decisions.

It doesn't matter that children are sewing your shoe, as long as you buy them for a cheap price. What would happen if a company in that area were to double their price because they're changing suppliers to more humane companies? What would happen to a CEO that presents a graph showing the costs going up and profits going down?

The shareholders will surely fire the CEO and the consumers will be outraged with the price increase and will most likely be switching to a competitor.

My point is that it doesn't matter if a few exceptions do the right thing. The rule is still the same and it will never change. That's capitalism's entire foundation.

[tomasien]

First of all, the idea that companies exist only to create profits does not mean that companies need to seek profits above all else. PEOPLE run and form companies and get to make decisions about how they run and form companies based on their own decision criteria. There's nothing about starting a company that excludes you from society and moral thinking.

Second of all, even thinking of the profit motive, people want to do work they feel good about. If you must make a profit argument, it's important for companies to draw lines about what they will and won't do and stick to them, to earn and keep the trust of their stakeholders (especially employees).

[Draiken]

While I agree with you, it's not what I see day to day. It all goes out of the door as soon as profits are affected.

Even more so for publicly traded companies. They will do whatever it takes to make profits. Just look at Google, Microsoft and Apple. They all started out with good intentions, but at some point they all turned into what they are today.

I really want someone smarter than me to say: yeah we just have to do X. But I'm afraid the end-game of capitalism was not really something anyone predicted (or cared?).

Every single industry out there exploits human beings for profits first, and if it makes good PR, sometimes they help people for a change.

The food industry creating a culture of unhealthy people, now even cashing in the "healthy" fad. The tech industry viciously exploiting privacy for advertising. The media also moved by the number of clicks on headlines. The health industry profiting off the sick. The list goes on.

While people run all of this, I can bet that the majority of them will make the choice that benefits "the company" over the one that benefits human beings even if only to get that promotion. Very few will sacrifice their careers to refuse doing something shady. Even at the micro scale, if you don't do it, the next guy will.

[lordnacho]

> The reasonable answer to where you draw the line is: when something is no longer compatible with your value system. And if that's not clear, the issue is that you haven't yet spent enough time defining your values. That's the thing to talk about, research, consider, ask advice on, etc. People having a solid, well-tested personal value system is critical to society's function, because that informs how groups of people like companies then operate, and so forth on up.

This sounds nice, but nobody has a clearly defined value system. Can you tell us what yours is?

Nobody can do that. At most people can write do is essays about why they decided one thing or another. If you ask them enough questions, you find contradictions.

I'm not trivializing what you're saying, either. I think you're onto a real human desire for consistency.

But if you read a bit about how people have thought about moral decisions, you find it's an endless rabbit hole. The history of moral thought doesn't have any conclusions. It's not like we can pick utilitarians and say "yep, that's the right one", because there are plenty of reasonable objections to any principle.

[barrkel]

That's a universal argument against having any morals. I wholly reject your apparent position. It is simply venal, wholly convenient for your own self-enrichment, damn the consequences - it's pretty much evil personified. You're a cog in a machine that runs on human suffering, and you're actively denying your culpability.

Yes indeed, we only find out where our line is when we consider problems in isolation. But just because you can only find out where the line is by poking out some other line and finding out where the two cross over, is no excuse not to define a line. It is absolutely not right.

[lordnacho]

You're beating a strawman here. I didn't say you can't make any moral judgements. Yeah, read it again.

I'm saying you can't expect people to have a "value system". It's just not a thing that someone other than a specialist would be able to enumerate.

> It is simply venal, wholly convenient for your own self-enrichment, damn the consequences - it's pretty much evil personified.

Well I hope that satisfies you to write. You, of course, had no skin in that game.

[unknownkadath]

Excellent point.

There is no excuse for any of us to behave like the moral equivalent of a paperclip maximizer.

[Ntrails]

> This sounds nice, but nobody has a clearly defined value system. Can you tell us what yours is?

Absolutes are generally horrific but without them it's impossible to codify any value system. With them you'll be driven to the edge of the line and asked how sure you are about it.

"Abortion is always wrong"

"what if doctors say the foetus has a 0% chance of being born alive and the mother has a 100% chance of dying without"

"Well, ok, maybe in that case"

"Ok, so the foetus is now 1% to survive and live for at most a year, and the mother 99% probability of death"

"Murder, abortion always wrong"

etc

[Faark]

There are no perfect value systems, yes. They are still great tools to prevent tragedy of the commons / prisoner dilemmas. And that's something we as a society must archive to thrive. An alternative is regulation, created by again some kind of value system like your utilitarians. I'd prefer not ending with a shitload of highly detailed regulation just because otherwise we'd fuck up the fabric society for personal gain. If there are effective alternatives in the first place...

[catholicworker]

There are consistent moral systems out there. Read Peter Maurin's http://www.easyessays.org/creating-problems/

[tomasien]

Demanding a bright line definition and rejecting any argument where one isn't provided is useless and unhelpful.

[lacker]

Why do you have to draw a line anywhere? For public companies, anyone can invest in them. I’m sure there is some Saudi money, and some money from all sorts of criminals, invested in every publicly traded company. As a society we seem happy with that, so what’s the difference between privately and publicly traded companies here?