[cma]

>And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live.

They can be. Say there are 1000 equal shareholders in a company, and they make up .01% of society. If they do $10,000,000 in damage to society they discount that by .01%, and just need to earn $1,000 as a company, one dollar each, in exchange in order for it to be "rational".

[lotsofmangos]

I find A&E makes a good example for this.

For A&E to work well needs A&E departments located within easy reach of an incident and to be staffed by people who are kept in practice and will operate immediately if required, instead of doing financial admin first.

Now this list of factors means you can always make money by shutting down A&E departments as they cannot do anything but operate at a loss.

However no matter how much money you make by doing so, you are increasing your own accidental mortality risk.

[chrisbennet]

What does "A&E" stand for? Edit: Found it - it is The UK equivalent of what Americans call a hospital Emergency Room or just "Emergency".

[stan_rogers]

Accident and emergency; it's the British English equivalent of the North American ER (emergency room).

[chrisbennet]

Edit 2: I typed too slow! Thanks though!

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Accident and emergency

[alphapapa]

That requires seeing everything as a matter of money. Not everything in life can be measured in dollars and cents.

We are all poorer--as a society--when some people profit at others' suffering.

You are demonstrating precisely the problem mentality that I am pointing out. Please wake up.

[AnthonyMouse]

> That requires seeing everything as a matter of money. Not everything in life can be measured in dollars and cents.

What do you propose to measure it in then? There are situations where you can save X number of lives by doing Y hours of labor, and there are cases where Y is so much larger than X that you have to say no, we aren't going to do that. How do you propose to make that kind of decision without using some comparable measure of value?

Nobody can claim that the current situation is optimal. It's kind of terrible. But it isn't because we measure things using money.

[alphapapa]

Your comparison is a bit apples-and-oranges. I'm talking about a situation in which a corporation can decide to either a) do something, make more profit, but harm other people in the process; or b) not do that something, make less profit, and leave others unharmed.

In such a situation, the choice should be made without metrics and comparisons--it's a matter of right vs. wrong. That is what is missing from the decision-making process: morality.

[cma]

If a company consistently does what's right they will be out competed by a company doing what's wrong. So they have to go a whole further level in their thinking.

[cma]

It is a systemic problem with the incentives. If the CEO is moral enough to go against shareholder interest, he'll be replaced. If not, the board members will be replaced through vote and possibly sued for going counter to shareholder interests. If not, the shareholders will be replaced by shareholders a more ruthless out-competiting company.

Imploring everyone to just be more moral isn't going to fix the systemic problems.