[standardUser]

The obvious claim is that companies will (and should) use any legal means to profit. If we don't want a certain behavior from a company we should elect people who support passing laws to regulate those activities. As has been done for generations.

But to pretend companies should just act like we want is ridiculous.

[dwaltrip]

The law and profit motive aren’t the only things guiding company behavior.

Those factors are very dominant, but I don’t think that is the whole story. Companies are composed of individuals, and individuals have complex reasons for their behavior, much more than simply not going to jail and making money.

[standardUser]

Historically, companies only stop doing bad things when regulated. That's just the reality and anything else is wishful thinking.

[dwaltrip]

Look, I hear you. I think you might be 95% right.

But there absolutely are people at companies who choose not to do bad things, or to even stop doing something bad the company was already doing, that cost the company some immediate profit, despite the fact that there wasn’t a regulation forcing them to make that choice.

This happens. People aren’t economic robots.

Maybe you want to argue that this happens such a small percentage of the time that it isn’t worth considering. Or that it isn’t practical or robust to rely on this dynamic if we wish to reduce systemic bad behavior by companies. Those are different and more reasonable claims, in my mind.

My hunch is that this is an important fact about the world that we shouldn’t discount entirely. But I do agree regulations are very important. And I’m not sure the best way to make use of the dynamic I’m describing.