I don't think the supreme court opinion matters in my opinion. I think it is the question of incentives. We should not be surprised if companies optimize for profits, especially if they are owned by shareholders who mainly care about profits. Because of that it is unreasonable (in my opinion) to rely on goodwill. We should instead ensure the regulations are such that unacceptable behaviour is not allowed.
Yeah, one point-of-view is Japanese companies and (mainly) American activist investors. Japanese management are usually cautious in their dealings and store (activist investors think it's hoarding) money, but activist investors are pressuring them to act faster and to operate on a relatively-lean budget.
It's not a myth. The person you are replying to did not say that corporate law requires companies to prioritize profit.
Coroporations need to prioritize profit because that's what they're for. Whenever it looks like a company is not prioritizing profit, what you're seeing is the employees and owners of a corporation using it as a tool to express their personalities and preferences. This is usually not good, it is corruption. There's no reason to think that the personalities and preferences of arbitrary employees and owners are good, or that they would tend to do good things.
The idea that companies have moralities, and that besides bringing in profit they also have some hazy duty to do things that I agree with personally is the myth. It's self-regulation propaganda. It's better to just have rules that keep companies from doing the things that we don't want them to do, instead of hoping that they will suddenly realize that money doesn't buy love, and that the only important things in life are health and family. That's not what they're for. That's what you're for. They're not real people.
> Coroporations need to prioritize profit because that's what they're for.
I disagree. Corporations do things (e.g. provide goods and services): that's what they're for. The whole "money" thing is just a means-to-an-end: a system of accounting to allow the corporation to continue to do what it's supposed to do. Money, after all, is inherently valueless: it's only worth anything because it can be exchanged for goods and services.
If powerful entities exist solely for making money, we risk the economy becoming completely decoupled from anything that actually matters.
It's not a problem of regulation but a problem of market capitalism. Executives in public companies are voted in by shareholders (even if so indirectly by the board). Shareholders seek return on their investment by increase in the value of their shares, which is directly linked to the revenue and profit of the company.
As a CEO of a public company, if you're not ready to do what increases profit, you will get replaced by someone who will. The main reason why it won't be profit "above everything else" is when there is a risk that the "above everything else" reduce either of profit or market cap: potential legal ramifications, bad press, etc.
He and his ilk forget all too quickly why we have regulations in the first place. People wanted them, because they were tired of polluted waterways, bank runs wiping away their life savings, and dangerous poisons being sold as medicine. Now that a functioning democracy has voted for privacy protections, it's a pretty "mask-off" moment that these regulations are the ones he rails against.
It wasn't that the people requesting certain things politely that brought regulation. It was when things turned nonprofitable or outright violent. The New Deal was the ideal of Roosevelt but other politicians knew very well what people did to the Tsar and his family. It didn't end well for them but it did scare quite a lot developed governments in the world.
Conflating bureaucratic red tape with regulations that actually protect citizens is the deceitful, immoral strategy, by people who are basically... evil.
Simplifying bureaucratic rules can be beneficial and can take countless forms (digitizing trivial manual work, removing duplication, applying materiality thresholds etc. etc.) The result is clearly a win-win for all.
Removing protective regulations is instead a zero sum game. Each fradulent bank behavior not persecuted is siphoning wealth from their clients. Each further exploitation of personal data collection is enriching the surveillance capitalists at the expense of the user-product (and ultimately our very democracies).
Society and politics has a lot of gray areas. This is not one of them.
Does being publicly traded imply a company shouldn't have a moral code to stand by?
Is it because the dumb ruling that companies are supposed to have the single goal of making money? Even if at the expense of cautiously ignoring or disregarding the law where it essentially acts as a fee?
I don't buy this. Companies _are made_ of people. The ones that set the direction can be more or less detached from the outcomes of those decisions, but are people nonetheless. Shareholders? People as well.
I agree, companies nor computers for themselves can't be moral, and instead need to rely on rules that model morals, but in order for them to interact with the world they need humans that allow them to interact with the world, and that must be held accountable for the morality of their systems.
This is why the AI world were, "sorry, computers says no" pretending to cut people off the loop is kind of scary, as people want to pretend this indirection frees them from accountability.
It'll be important for the law to reflect this, but ultimately just being lawfully right, but morally wrong can get you shot in the back anyways.
I assure you, that a company cannot have a morality. It also cannot have a preference for chocolate ice cream, basketball or have children. Companies are not made of people either. Similarly, if you want to speak to a company, you will speak to someone whose job it is to represent the company - you will not speak to the company itself - its a legal fiction.
Companies are legal paperwork that real people engage with to get money - such is the way our society is organised.
If you were to argue that some animals exhibit morality - I would see what you mean.
Yes but who/what dictates the tone the company will use to answer you? Ultimately, a person. Even if they are just following a style manual, that was written by a group of people as well. And reviewed by some C-level, probably.
Individuals can take on groupthink idea (ie a company) - they can re-interpret the information in a relatively coherent way. Think of the idea of say 'Christians' - there is a relatively coherent idea there being animated in all those minds. But then, at an individual level, there is difference in what is believed (eg 'the Father' idea will be be different in each). Its just assumed that the groupthink idea is the same in all. Its a pleasing illusion for an individual to believe.
There is no company morality - as companies and groups cannot feel or register value. The value is entirely in the individual. Yes, one individual can affected and be affected by another. Yes, an individual can say 'We at Google blah blah' and mean what they are saying, and still be wrong.
The idea of a 'group' with feelings, morality etc is just an illusory projection.
