[armonster]

Corporations should be assumed to act in line with their interests, which is the bottom line. "Morality" isn't the lens that you need to try to view them through to understand their intentions and actions. But yes, their motivations pretty much always lay outside of any moral good due to the nature of them.

[jayd16]

Yeah ok, the bear isn't evil but it will still maul you on sight.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the bear isn't evil but it will still maul you on sight

The bear still has unified agency. Corporations do not. (No group of people do.) More than the wind, less than a bear. And I think their flaws are probably shared by all large human organisations.

[ryandrake]

They're lawnmowers[1], not bears.

1: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s

[ptx]

Isn't unified agency the point of forming an organization? The organization generally elects leaders to direct the actions of the organization for some common purpose, e.g. through policies and direct decisions, and they can (or should) be held accountable for those actions.

[Lutger]

Maybe this is taking it too far, but anyway: corporations don't have any agency. They are not persons. The organization and constellation of interests of corporations may be such that:

1. immoral people (such as psychopaths) will be disproportionately at the helm of large corporations

2. regular people will make immoral decisions, because to do otherwise would be against their own interests or because the consequences / moral impact are hidden from their awareness

There is no way to act in life that isn't in some sense moral or political, because it also impacts others and you are always responsible for your what you do (or don't do). And corporations are just a bunch of people doing stuff together. To maintain otherwise is in itself a (im)moral act, intentionally or not, see point 2 above.

[amelius]

If corporations are not people then why are their ads full of elements that make us feel warm and fuzzy?

We're being tricked!