[MrBuddyCasino]

> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise.

This is not true. Some company’s value proposition is explicitly moral virtue, eg organic food brands.

They tend to be family-owned SMO rather than international publicly traded corporations. The issue has more to do with scale and diffusion of responsibility.

[CaptainOfCoit]

Unless those organic food brands are structured as non-profits, they'll eventually need to make compromises on their value proposition, balanced in a way that shareholders/owners get profits while (hopefully) still provide a net-positive to society.

So far, not many for-profit companies have been successful long-term in balancing those two things, as net-positive for society is not strictly necessary for the ultimate goal, generating profits.

[danaris]

In addition to what sibling commenter cqqxo4zV46cp says, you are assuming that either all these companies are publicly traded or a majority of their shareholders see themselves as investors rather than owners.

I know nothing particular about the ownership structure of organic food brands, but you cannot simply assume that these things are true. It is perfectly possible for such a brand to be wholly owned by its founders, who maintain an ethos of putting good food and the environment above maximum profit.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

Citation needed.

Do you know what shareholders even are?

Are you in such a tech bubble that you can’t comprehend of an organisation delivering surplus value back to shareholders by just…doing something that people want, and charging for it? It sounds like you think that tech startup hypergrowth followed by enshitification is, like, a given, in every situation.

It isn’t. MOST businesses don’t work this way. Evidently just the ones that you read about.

[resource_waste]

Race to the bottom. At some point it becomes natural resource extraction.

How much do cotton shirts cost now? 1-3$?

[MrBuddyCasino]

In the eternal words of Norm McDonald: "no offense but it sounds like some commie gobbledygook".

[resource_waste]

These kind of comments make me sad because I remember being younger and believing this stuff.

Companies are legal entities, they are amoral. What you are seeing is a leader. I really hope that leader that you believe in, and inspires you to believe and comment such things on HN never fails you.

[dwallin]

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the structure of a public corporation is inherently (and imo, intentionally) amoral? A defining characteristic of modern capitalism is the widespread laundering of responsibility.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Incidentally, this is also true for modern democracies.