[tetrisgm]

I identify as a leftist. I believe the government, and more generally a nation, has a duty to ensure quality of life for its citizens.

That said, I think this article is grounded in a false dichotomy: "As Silicon Valley has had one of its most profitable years in history, thousands of people who live in walking distance from the headquarters of the world's best-known tech giants are going hungry."

How does distance to the hungry matter? Companies are already donating. They have no duty to. The failure isn't on their end. I'd also extrapolate that the failure isn't on the system currently in place: if they're getting funded and people are still hungry: why are they hungry?

There isn't enough access to jobs, there is too much financial duress, and there isn't a layer of support to help these people. That's entirely on the government to sort. Blaming businesses for not sorting this problem is simply moving the goalposts.

[runawaybottle]

I’ve been making parallels to Southeast Asia all week lately. I need you to take a trip to one of those cities there and book a hotel room in a 5 star place. Outside of it, there will be slums (right out your window). A five minute drive, you’ll see people bathing in the ponds (not vacation bathing, brushing their teeth, taking a shit, morning routine bathing). Think through what the end result of this line of thinking actually creates, the case studies are all over the world. You can afford this, book a trip today and just get the perspective. You will not need to imagine what your theoretical thinking leads to, you can be your own ghost of Christmas future and literally see it.

It’s a disaster, we are tech people, just scale up or scale down, use the inductive step to complete the proof. If we are not proactive with these things, we won’t have quality of life.

You would not want to be in a society like that. Once you neglect and let the situation deteriorate, the only way you can achieve an environment that matches your identity is via a dystopia, where the best and the best congregate in the best gate kept part of the world. A shining city, a 5 star hotel, encapsulated from it’s neglect.

[rmrfstar]

> The failure isn't on their end.

So Apple et al. are able to successfully monetize massive public investment in technology, book all their profit in tax havens using outlandish schemes like "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich", and we're supposed to pretend like that's a totally normal thing?

The thing with free-riding is it doesn't work if everyone does it. That's what we're starting to see.

[jonny_eh]

All those loopholes can easily be closed, but they're not.

[rmrfstar]

You're either naive or dishonest. FAAMG actively lobby Congress to create and preserve "loopholes" which are actually intentional features of the tax code rather than unforeseen errors. Apple is also lobbying against a very popular anti-slavery bill. #ESG

[jonny_eh]

Right, that was my point. In the end it's the responsibility of politicians to do their job and close the loopholes. How can we expect corporations to be moral if elected officials won't?

[rmrfstar]

So Apple corruptly bribes Congress to give it legislative benefits, Congress corruptly accepts those bribes, and the blame lies solely with Congress? That's one way of looking at things.

[netizen-9748]

While I agree that companies shouldn't be corrupt, I think the idea is that our system is supposed to be designed to prevent corruption and bribery on the government side and that appears to have failed.

[jonny_eh]

> Congress corruptly accepts those bribes, and the blame lies solely with Congress?

Well, ya. It's their job to not be corrupt.

[dragonwriter]

> How can we expect corporations to be moral if elected officials won't?

How can we expect figureheads elected in elections conducted in an environment of unlimited corporate propaganda to be moral if the actual ruling class of capitalist society, the capitalists acting directly and through their employees—e.g., via corporations—won’t?

[goldenManatee]

This is a classic argument for doing nothing, which is a stance promoting existing systems of inequality. Ask government to solve it, they propose paying for services that help lessen inequality with tax strategies that target those most able to - large corporations and the wealthiest - then people get upset that government is too big, sucking dry the wealthiest, and they start moving to Texas lol. So what’s the game plan?

[edmundsauto]

But these companies aren’t doing nothing, they’re investing significant resources in their local communities, frequently with an emphasis on underserved.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Blaming businesses is moving the goalposts. I agree that it's a national problem, and I think that businesses, government, and individuals should together sort everything out. If any group abrogates that responsibility, they make it much harder to be addressed effectively.