[afthonos]

So what would be impossible to explain in a world where “corporate greed” is indeed what causes all these things? The answer can’t be “nothing”—or “corporate greed” doesn’t mean anything.

I can say, for example, that under gravity, an object will not accelerate upwards when entering else stays down; if you show me that happening, I either have to say gravity didn’t cause it, or that gravity is not what we thought it was (and we should probably get a new word for whatever it has).

[antonvs]

Any corporate behavior that doesn’t lead fairly directly to increased share price, profit, revenues, or market share would qualify.

But in the American corporate model, corporations almost by definition don’t do muck of that, because there’s an entrenched belief that increasing shareholder value is their primary mission. Positions to the contrary, like https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v..., are not widely understood or accepted.

[thelaxiankey2]

The argument your link suggests is legal, not empirical. Legally speaking, there is no mandate, and acting like there is is almost surely bad for society. So I don't disagree there.

And as to the existence of exceptions, that is what makes humanities hard. Unlike physics, it is never all, it's always most, it's always shades and never direct. I use absolutist words in these discussions because it makes the points stick better, but I obviously do not mean them totally.

I think corporations maximizing profit is the default, and so writing an op-ed about how corporate greed caused something to happen seems pretty dumb to me.