[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.