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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. |
They really are not, and the entire corporate form is structured and governed by law differently than partnerships to make them not like that.
I mean, unless you count the chartering government, it's constituents, and all the investors as part of the group, as well as all the managers and other employees. But its completely useless to talk about the collectively morality of the aggregate of such a heterogenous group of individual actors with different knowledge and constraints with regard to the actions of the corporations. It makes sense to talk about, in any given value framework, the desirability of corporate action, and the morality of any of the individual actors.
> 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?
That's the consequence of viewing the corporation as an independent moral actor, since that allows viewing the corporation as the responsible party.
> I'm a pragmatist, it's not going to change
I'm a pragmatist, and recognize that it needs to change, and that change starts with not viewing corporations as moral agents, but as tools.