[marcus_holmes]

I think this explains a lot of the "companies only act in the interests of their shareholders" thing, too. I know there's a legal obligation to act in the interests of the shareholders, but additionally, as TFA points out: shareholders have a really easy time quantifying their damages so that a case can be brought.

Employees having a really bad time at a company because it keeps doing bad things have to be able to quantify that bad time in dollars, and that's hard.

It's interesting to think of how we could adjust the legal system to allow for emotional distress, environmental damage, morally bad actions, etc on their own terms without having to convert them to monetary damages. Make it easier for a court to judge executive decisions on moral grounds and that makes it easier to claim damages for bad decisions and that makes it easier to keep companies behaving morally.

[bruce511]

>> judge executive decisions on moral grounds

Morals are subjective and fluid. They are effectively areas where society has "agreed to disagree".

Morals that society agree on are codified into laws. The legal system is set up to enforce and uphold laws. It cannot uphold morals because they are not law.

As executives we allowed alcohol at the year end party. If some of our group gave a moral position of no alcohol (say Mormons or Muslims) is that morally incorrect for us yo allow it?

What if said objector imbibed at the event? Are we "morally responsible"? Who gets to decide and tell us what is morally ok or not ok?

[marcus_holmes]

I disagree that morals align with laws.

There are endless examples of legal actions which are utterly immoral.

I agree that morals are personal and differ between individuals. Though that's not an opinion that religious folks accept: they hold that morals are defined by their deity and codified in their sacred texts. I'm glad we don't recognise that codification in our laws (though some countries do).

Having said all that, there are some pretty clear cases where companies are acting immorally; against the interests of their employees, customers, etc and generally against the interests of humanity. It would be cool to be able to call this shit out in a court without having to monetise the damages.

[bruce511]

Companies should (and are) called out for immoral behaviour. Citizens, journalists etc do it all the time.

And I agree that some laws are immoral. Either because morals have changed while the law has remained static, or because the elected people who wrote the law themselves behaved immorally (and subsequent electees have not sought to reveal them.)

But the place for pointing out immoral behavior is not the courts. And the penalty for such behavior is our wallets - if you don't like a company, don't doend your money with them.