[lamontcg]

Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation.

They're both just engaged in business.

I can believe that Apple is acting incredibly badly in this case without needing to fluff up Epic Games at all.

Apple and Samsung could sue each other and do business with each other because the stakes were lower and they were more codependent.

[hwillis]

That's just the opposite kind of naive. Companies are still for the most part run by CEOs, and many of those CEOs have tremendous egos and most of them have a tremendous ability to direct the actions of those companies. Look at Tesla and Twitter lawsuits- they're clearly in Musks's interests.

Companies aren't minds of their own directing their own actions. Tim cook or some other high level executive is deciding these actions. Stop abrogating the direction of the literal directors

[overstay8930]

Twitter is a private company and Apple has a board of directors very interested in not rocking the boat

[hwillis]

A board can only really exert soft pressure. Their options are very limited outside trying to fully replace a CEO unless they have something to use as a stick. Apple in particular prints money unlike any other company on earth and its board is not going to stop Tim Cook from doing pretty much whatever he feels like.

[wkat4242]

> Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation. They're both just engaged in business.

This is what's wrong with the current overly capitalist system. Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience, and externalise whatever they please to consumers and the environment. And you could even argue they are 'forced' to do so by due diligence legislation.

If we let this continue there will be no world left to fix. We have to change the game. I'm not saying we should go full communism. Capitalism isn't bad but there needs to be a balance between business and society with actual accountability (rather than the current 'green' initiatives basically just being PR without any kind of enforcement). It can't be all about money.

I think for US culture it's hard to imagine doing this but here in Europe society has always had this balance, at least in most countries. Initiatives like RoHS, GDPR, DSA/DMA are often called anticompetitive but we are actually trying to improve things for the benefit of society, not just the shareholders.

[usefulcat]

It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect.

If they could make just as much money (or more) without doing any of those other things, they absolutely would, and any company that wouldn't do the same would eventually be put out of business via competition, barring some kind of external intervention, say from the state.

If you want companies to grow a conscience, you're first going to have to figure out how to change their incentives, which means changing the environment in which they operate.

[elcritch]

> It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect.

What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits. They're made up of humans too, and usually it's some executive making a final call. There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit.

The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO. Corporations can and should also be held to account legally and ethically for being good stewards of public interests in addition to profitability. In the end they're just tools for organization, and a rather effective one, but they're still run and accountable to humans and human values.

[usefulcat]

> What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits.

Do corporations do other things besides make profits? Yes; I previously said as much. The point is about why they do the things they do.

> There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit.

Perhaps in the short term, if they can afford to economically, but isn't this kind of like the exception that proves the existence of the rule?

Is Tesla a car company that wants to make great cars and help reduce carbon emissions for the benefit of all? Maybe, but their primary goal must be profits, because they can't do any of the other stuff if they aren't profitable.

> The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO.

I disagree that it encourages that behavior. If you want to change that behavior then an accurate understanding of the current state of affairs is a necessary prerequisite.

Like if you're going to say, "I want <insert company here> to do less of X and more of Y", then surely your first order of business must be to understand why they are doing X in the first place and not so much of Y (hint: it's usually because of profits).

In the case of corporations, because being profitable is necessarily the first priority, it follows that the most effective way to change the behavior of a corporation is pretty much anything that affects their profit, as opposed to appealing to the moral/ethical/whatever values of their leadership. If you want ethical corporate leadership, then you have to make it unprofitable to be unethical.

[blueprint]

people don't act out of conscience because there's a particular incentive for them to do so. They act out of conscience, because there's a disincentive, naturally, in doing something wrong as an individual, or as anyone with any amount of accountability at all. But as long as entities shield or provide a mechanism of free absolution to those responsible for harming others and the environment, then there never will be such a disincentive. They can always hide behind the organization, or perhaps the manipulative, false rhetoric that they are simply looking out for shareholder profits.

A false, ill-justified argument can be disassembled from multiple angles. One of the trivial counterarguments to our current wrong state of affairs is that the above mentioned profits are not actually real profits. It's actually people stealing from others. So many people engage in the same behavior that they can't call out the serious offenders without giving up their own mask.

Humanity en masse actually does not deserve better. That's why we're in this situation. If we did give up our lies, we would demand others do too, as we demand a good world.

[AnthonyMouse]

The mechanism we have for this is supposed to be competition. If one company is screwing you over, you patronize a different one.

This, of course, doesn't work in consolidated markets, and so what is necessary is for consolidated markets to be deconsolidated.

[pixelbyindex]

> Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit.

I think I understand that you mean to say "Corporations", whose governing body is made up of board members and executives. In that sense, there certainly seems to be a strong correlation.

In my case, however, I started a game company this year, and my goals are not profit driven. I haven't sat down to write things out but I probably should. Loosely, my company's two main goals:

- To make fun/mindblowing/entertaining pieces of Art. This is done by working on the gaming dreams that myself and my employees have.

- To give my employees a future where they care about the company as much as I do, feel financially well compensated and satisfied in their career, and have support for their aspirations and ideas.

[usefulcat]

I agree, 'corporations' is definitely a better fit for the argument I'm trying to make.

It's perfectly fine if making a lot of money is not the most important thing to you personally. However, your company will obviously have to at least be at least breaking even in order to continue to exist so that it/you can do the things that you do care about.

From that viewpoint, profitability (defined as 'at least breaking even', as opposed to 'maximizing $$') is still the most important thing because the very existence of the company depends on it.

[XajniN]

Those are your goals, and your company's profits may enable you to achieve them. Your company's sole purpose is getting you those profits.

That's economics 101, stop idealizing business entities.

[gitaarik]

Companies aren't often started just to make profit. Founders are usually passionate about the product / service they are creating, and want to create it to make a nice contribution to the world, and also make their living from it: best of both worlds.

It starts to change when a company is becoming too big. The original founder(s) usually leave or they themselves become infected by the money. In any case, everything becomes more nasty: people are being treated more like numbers, clients too, less personal contact, more lawsuits, etc.

I think the solution is very simple: just make a size limit to how big companies are allowed to grow. They'll have to split up and compete with each other. Way more healthy economy.

[lossolo]

Besides generating profits for shareholders, let's amend the law to require that business activities also avoid causing harm and benefit society. This means every decision would need to balance the interests of shareholders with those of society at large. Such a requirement could lead to reduced profits for shareholders. Moreover, this change would need to be implemented worldwide, otherwise, capital might simply shift to regions with less stringent regulations.

[lenkite]

None of the DEI initiatives have anything to do with pure profit. If pure profit was the prime driving initiative, Google Gemini would not turn out like it did.

[gitaarik]

No, DEI is mostly implemented to be political correct, so that they are somewhat protected from being targeted for those kind of controversial topics. In other words, very important commercial incentive.

[fsflover]

If you want to dedicate your company to a purpose over profit, it should be something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation

[d0gsg0w00f]

Most senior leaders I've experienced are preserving profits so they can maintain headcount. Is it without conscience to make sure thousands of people retain jobs? Even if it's ego driven it's still mutually beneficial.

[OCASMv2]

Hard not to act as they do when its consumers happily reward them with their money.

[mptest]

If only there were someone, or some institution that could think more long term than mindless consumers. We could call it a Governing board or something!

[lamontcg]

> Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience

I don't think companies are going to form a conscience any time soon.

We need to deal with the fact that they're best viewed as being inherently sociopathic and regulate them effectively.

[Gormo]

Perhaps a better alternative would be to stop anthropomorphising abstractions, and not try to weirdly attribute intentionality, independent agency, or sociopathy to the same thing we're acknowledging is incapable of conscience because it isn't a person.

Corporations are organizational models employed by humans in pursuit of human motivations. They are not entities unto themselves. Everything is humans, all the way down.

[letsdothisagain]

Corporate personhood means that legally they are. If we stripped that away and let the board of governors go to jail for doing blatantly illegal stuff, then they might stop being sociopathic.

I'd also like a pony.

[Gormo]

Corporate officers who commit criminal violations in the conduct of their job are already legally liable for their behavior. The corporation they work for might also incur liability under the law of agency and vicarious liability.

Corporate personhood applies primarily to private law -- contract liability, civil torts, financial obligations and the like.

[int_19h]

No, they'd still be sociopathic. They'd do the absolute minimum they have to do under the law, and no more than that - exactly as a sociopath would if watched by someone with the ability to hurt them.

Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither.

This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies.

[dpkonofa]

But in the case of the boards being mentioned, the sociopathy is combined with competition between members that doesn't exist right now. If one board member suggests doing something that would be negatively viewed but another doesn't, they are then competing with each other for the direction of the company as opposed to working together to do whatever sociopathic things serves both their best interests.

Sociopathy is all about driving the interests of the individual. Boards not being liable for the actions of companies allows those interests to always be aligned. Taking that away would require them to think about what's good for the business but also what's good for themselves and those things won't always align for all board members the way they do now.

[Gormo]

> Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither.

And, for the same reason, they have no capacity for autonomous thought and action. Corporations are just organizational models for coordinating human activity, but all of the agency still originates with individuals, because there's nothing else that it could originate with.

All malicious acts you are attributing to corporations actually originate from the malicious intent of individuals who are merely using the corporation as an organizational model.

> This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies.

Keeping organized forms of social coordination "small and toothless" is inherently antagonistic to the concept of society itself -- the proper solution is to constrain malicious behavior without interfering with non-malicious behavior, regardless of how that behavior is coordinated or formalized.

There's also a paradox here, in that I have not seen any mechanism proposed for combating the implicit sociopath of one kind of organization that doesn't rely on creating even greater concentrations of monopoly power in the hands of an essentially equivalent form of organization.

[dantheman]

Capitalism is a system of private property and voluntary exchange. There's tons of accountability - people can stop buying and interacting with these companies.

[dpkonofa]

This isn't always the case. Some of these companies own and run the only methods of doing certain things. There are some places, for example, where you can't use cash to pay for things. That means that, in those places, you cannot stop buying and interacting with Visa and Mastercard, for example.

[MerManMaid]

Honest question, can you provide a single example of a company that came to dominate an industry only to then go out of business purely because people chose to stop buying and interacting with them?

I honestly can't think of a single example of a monopoly, cartel, or industry leading company which has ever crumbled due to everyone collectively deciding not to do business with them. (without some sort of government regulation or technological advancement facilitating the change)

[sunshinerag]

What is a "overly" capitalist system? Where we would find companies with a conscience for example? Argentina?

[donw]

"Capitalist" is a nonsense term that no longer carries any meaning.

There is a revolving door between government and corporate leadership.

There is no functional difference between corporate America and public service at this point in time.

One does not rule the other: they are one and the same.

Social media companies have entire teams run by Federal law enforcement.

Federal leadership draws its senior staff from companies like Google.

It is impossible to conduct business without thoroughly invasive involvement of multiple layers of government telling you what you can do, how you must do it, tracking your actions to ensure you comply, and levying obscene punishments if you don't.

For this "service" you are charged a level of tax that would make the Pharaohs green with envy.

[RespectYourself]

Epic isn't squeaky-clean, but Apple is making dangerous and dumb decisions in this whole debate.

Banning third-party payments was one thing, but then Apple banned publishers from TELLING people about the ability to pay through a Web site.

That is not just unnecessary from a business standpoint (since the vast majority of people opt for the most convenient thing); but it's so offensive that it invites crackdowns, implemented by ignorant politicians and legislative bodies... hurting Apple's bottom line.

Apple is tarnishing its image and earning it a place among the true offenders of "big tech," a place it mostly doesn't belong because it's not a gatekeeper to huge swaths of the Internet and commerce the way Google, Amazon, and Meta are.

[dpkonofa]

>but it's so offensive that it invites crackdowns, implemented by ignorant politicians and legislative bodies... hurting Apple's bottom line.

Apple is a billion (nay trillion) dollar company with the best lawyers and accountants in the world. They clearly believe that the added uncertainty and negative perception that could be attached to their brand by allowing systems that can increase fraud and malfeasance is more harmful to their bottom line than maintaining their walled garden with all the accompanying "crackdowns".

I, for one, agree with them. I would much rather keep the existing system for both myself and my extended family members and people who rely on me as their tech person than allow these third-party vultures to further complicate and enshittify the system. In the current case, if my parents bought something on their phone, I know exactly where to go to see the purchase and can easily help them refund it or, if it's a subscription, cancel it. Corporations misleading people into using external payment systems and channels in order to make a quicker buck (and keep more of that buck) is easily a worse experience for everyone involved except the vultures.

[AnthonyMouse]

It seems pretty clear what should happen here: Apple should be able to require you to accept their payment system, but not to require you to charge uniform pricing across payment systems, and not be able to charge you anything for sales outside of their payment system.

Now you can continue to use Apple's payment system all you like, but if Apple continues to charge 30% when e.g. Stripe charges ~3%, you're going to pay the difference for the privilege.

And with any luck that would encourage Apple to match Stripe's fees, but either way, now the choice is yours instead of the extra fees being hidden and mandatory.

[dpkonofa]

How does that seem clear? Apple should provide services and support for people using the payment system without getting any gain from that system?

You're being disingenuous to suggest that the only benefit Apple provides is a payment system.

[AnthonyMouse]

The test of whether they're in compliance should be whether it's feasible to sell an app to an iOS user without paying anything to Apple.

Apple can charge for whatever they want, but they can't put up a troll bridge between other businesses and their customers. Then you can choose whether to use their service or not. If they want to charge for payment processing, you can use Stripe or Paypal. If they want to charge for XCode, you can use VSCode or emacs. If they want to charge for app distribution, you can use the Epic Games Store -- or Google Play -- or host it yourself on AWS or your own servers. Whatever they want to charge for, they have to open up to competition.

If their services are good and well-priced then people will choose them even when they have an alternative. If they're not, they won't.