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by mnowicki 1797 days ago
I understand your individual points, but not your final conclusion. It gives me the sense that you think maximizing profits for shareholders is "the greater good", moreso than doing what(in the opinion of employees) is right.

I totally understand the logo anecdote and that makes sense, but it's different when the employees opinion differs for moral reasons, I'd say employees ARE more qualified to make those calls than those who are beholden to investors and motivated to maximize profits above all else - IF, that is, your goal is to be moral and not to maximize profits, which is where I'm feeling a disconnect with your posts.

1 comments

> It gives me the sense that you think maximizing profits for shareholders is "the greater good", moreso than doing what(in the opinion of employees) is right.

This is correct. This is win-win for shareholders and employees.

And if an employee thinks the company should not maximize profits, they can work in non-profit organization.

But why come to for-profit company and demand that company to stop making profits? It does not make sense to me.

> it's different when the employees opinion differs for moral reasons

Moral reasons is a slippery slope. What is moral to one group or people is immoral to other group of people.

I imagine employees may say, we must fight climate change, so we must replace our trucks with electric trucks. This is definitely moral, but this might be not sustainable, and this might be a way to make a company bankrupt. So you express your opinion about trucks, but leave it to the management to decide, whether it can afford it. They often can (because for example good publicity).

> But why come to for-profit company and demand that company to stop making profits? It does not make sense to me.

I agree this is foolish, but at the same time don't blame people for trying. I'm glad these companies have at least a few people applying pressure, potentially making it less profitable for companies to do the 'wrong' thing.

> I imagine employees may say, we must fight climate change, so we must replace our trucks with electric trucks. This is definitely moral, but this might be not sustainable, and this might be a way to make a company bankrupt

At the point we are right now, I'd prefer the company go bankrupt if they can't afford to not destroy the environment. I know it sounds extreme and if this happened at all such companies could cause a considerable economic/societal collapse, but I'd prefer societal collapse over societal collapse and destroyed planet.

> Moral reasons is a slippery slope. What is moral to one group or people is immoral to other group of people.

Overall I think I understand your point more now. I'm curious if you'd agree with the sentiment of the 2 points I just made in this post though. I do feel that just about any moral claim is debatable, but certain things like climate change I'm confident enough in my own beliefs to justify acting on them. The way I see it, we don't know anything 100% for sure, moral or not, so as humans we have to draw the line somewhere and act on the things we have the most conviction for. Other people might have opposing morals and I won't intentionally infringe on their rights but I'll still oppose them on whatever issues we disagree on. I don't claim to be the arbiter of truth but I'm also not going to disregard morality because other people have different views and I might be wrong anyway.