[mattmanser]

"We" didn't stop, it was cheaper for Coca-Cola to use plastic. Coca-Cola did it.

Stop blaming consumers for corporate choices to slightly increase profits.

Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault?

[gambiting]

The corporations only make those choices because they are allowed to(or rather, because they are not forced by the regulations to actually pay for the environmental cost of what they make). Yes, I recently noticed that with Tesco eggs, I have complained to them about it. And it's not our fault but we can definitely try to avoid these products as consumers. Telling companies why you avoid them is also a good thing to do.

[munificent]

I hate this attitude that treats corporations as having zero responsibility beyond what they are legally mandated to do. Yes, it is an observable fact that corporatism and market economics incentivize corporations to behave that way. But it is an unjustified leap to turn that into a moral claim that it is ethically acceptable for that to be true.

People are incentivized to commit package theft in the US today. The odds of being caught and prosecuted are very slim, and the upside is you get free stuff. As an economic action, it is very market efficient: low barrier of entry, large number of "sellers", few cabals or controls over prices. There definitely isn't perfect information on products, but given that the cost is near-zero, that doesn't matter much. As a business, "package theft" is a great one to get into, and the market highly rewards you for doing so.

However, we correctly consider people who do so as despicable shitwads who rightfully earn our scorn and condemnation. We publicly shame them, and certainly don't want to hang out with them and count them as friends.

We should do the same with businesses that do morally harmful acts, regardless of whether the act is technically illegal or incentivized by market forces. It is certainly the business's fault when they do a shitty thing. They have fully agency in the choice of whether or not do so.

[dragonwriter]

Corporations aren't natural persons and have no ethics. They are abstract creations of law and the only legitimate expectations of corporations as corporations are their responses to structural incentives including enforced legal obligations.

We can talk about the ethics of the actions of corporate decision-makers, but only while keeping in mind that structural incentives mean that decision-makers who sacrifice the narrow interests of corporate investors for ethical reasons beyond the constraints forcibly externally imposed on corporations are likely to, over time, be replaced by those who do not.

If you want corporations to act consistently with some view of ethics, you aren't going to do it sustainably by moral persuasion directed at decision-makers, but only by shifting the structural incentives.

[mattmanser]

You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations.

Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. It's just a legal accident, a mummers farce, and you defending it is morally reprehensible too.

Worse still, it didn't used to be this way till some prat of an economist (probably American) starting saying so, and a bunch of people smelling easy money piled on. Companies used to care about their image, now their "care" about their shareholders (but actually their contractual bonuses and severance packages).

[dragonwriter]

> You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations.

No, I'm saying that considering corporations to be subjects of morality at all is pointless, and that one ought to consider what they want corporations to do to acheive moral ends, and then work to establish structures to at least incentivize that, if not actually constrain them to it.

> Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right.

I think you start from a false premise here; that it is of no value to analyze corporations as if they were moral actors does not in any way absolve any natural persons for the immorality of any actions they undertake in or around a corporate structure.

It just removes the ability to pass blame for immorality off on to an abstraction, and focuses it on the people responsible for the abstraction (which, for creatures of law, in addition to any others includes those responsible for the law, either as lawmakers or as electors thereof.)

[mattmanser]

Why is it pointless? Corporations are simply a collective of people, working together.

There was a story on here today about the dilemma a roman consul faced because the laws were contradictory. It was fine to murder for revenge, in fact Roman law didn't get involved in revenge or murders really, but patricide was viewed as an absolute wrong, a no-no. The woman had murder her Mum in revenge as the Mum had killed her grand-children to spite her Daughter. It was a real dilemma, revenge is fine, and it was a good reason for revenge, but parricide is an absolute wrong.

Does that sound normal?

Of course not TO US.

I think that in the future, today's corporate law will be viewed just as asinine and bizarre. Corporations poisoning people by flooding chemicals into rivers or releasing gasses or toxins, murdering people with product defects they decided not recall or destroying society's common goods, but all the people involved were let free rather than incarcerated for 20 years as accessories to murder? Thousands of people colluding to murder people with cigarettes when they knew how lethal they were? Fine. Because they were "employees" and the "person" doing it was a legal figment called a corporation?

A bunch of black people in America get incarcerated for simply being friends/near the murderer, but a bunch of white people who all spent years or even decades covering up systematic mass-murder get to walk away? Man, when you actually think about it it's mind-blowing. White collar crime is so easy to get away with.

It's a convenient fabrication that makes sense only when you're inside the system.

I'm a pragmatist, it's not going to change, it's the way it is, but otoh you simply can't see the wood for the trees. You think, somehow, it's right.

[munificent]

> No, I'm saying that considering corporations to be subjects of morality at all is pointless

Is it pointless to consider political parties to be subjects of morality? Is it meaningless to say "The Nazi Party is bad."? If so, what is meaningfully different between a political party, a corporation, or any other kind of organized collective activity?

> It just removes the ability to pass blame for immorality off on to an abstraction, and focuses it on the people responsible for the abstraction (which, for creatures of law, in addition to any others includes those responsible for the law, either as lawmakers or as electors thereof.)

I think I get what you're saying. We should focus on the people, not the group, because the people can be punished. But I think that's an ineffective mindset.

The entire reason individuals organize into groups is because they can do more as a group than they could have accomplished as individuals.

If we don't allow our moral code to also operate at the group level, then it will always be at a disadvantage compared to the people whose organized behavior has moral outcomes with strong economies of scale.

We should treat individuals and groups as moral actors. We should be willing to say, "this corporation as an emergent behavior of its otherwise moral individuals did a bad thing, so should thus be dissolved."

[Ntrails]

We are responsible for our parliamentary representatives, and thereby our laws. It is absolutely our fault, as a society, as consumers.

[res0nat0r]

Good doc here on how the plastic industry pushed for "recycling" laws so they could look like the good guys, but much of the stuff you see the recycling logo on can't in fact be recycled.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/

[bostik]

> Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault?

If you keep buying them, yes. Tesco's beancounters (who are legion) are certainly going to keep track of the overall cost and revenue structure. Assuming the plastic containers cost less and are sold in equal amounts, they will push forward to roll out plastic over cardboard where they can.

If they want price signals, give them price signals. Vote with your wallet.

We buy our eggs from a nearby farm. Tray of 30 is good for a week, and sometimes two. Better quality than what Tesco or Sainsbury's offers, too.

EDIT: we also return our cardboard trays to the farm shop when we buy a new batch. Reuse >> recycle.

[mattmanser]

Slightly OT: I may be a bit unfair picking on Tesco as it turns out the pulp used to make egg cartons has run out because of the demand for eggs from the covid home-baking upswing, they do plan to switch back.

But only because the last time they pulled this stunt back in 2011 or so claiming it was eco-friendly to use "recyclable" plastic it blew up in their face (most of which isn't recycled) .

[bostik]

Fair enough. Now that you mention it, I remember how during the height of the lockdown cardboard pretty much ran out. People bought more stuff online (lots of cardboard in packaging), while there was no waste paper collection to fill the demand from the supply side.

There still isn't enough waste paper collection happening, really. The communal large containers are emptied at most once a week - and they have capacity for less than two days. People have a lot more cardboard packaging to get rid of, but with collection points hitting their capacity in 1/3 of the pre-covid time, there's a constant backlog to get through.

> last time they pulled this stunt back in 2011 or so

Wasn't aware of this historical detail. Thanks.

[matthewheath]

> Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones.

They've only switched because they've run out of the pulp used to make the cardboard egg containers. It's a temporary switch, although not ideal.

[makomk]

I'm sure the disruption to UK recycling collections due to Covid can't have helped much with that.

[petre]

A plastic tax would solve this. Make plastic containers at least as expensive as cardboard or aluminium cans through added taxes.