We are complicit in our employer’s deeds

Tech has a tendency to view the world in isolation.

You can't work in fashion because it uses child labor. Rare metals used in electronics are mined in places with terrible work conditions. Don't even get me started on petroleum dependent industries.

What does that leave us with ?

Even companies that build apps or SAAS make their money from clients in these industries or consumers who are as a majority employed by them. Just because we establish a few degrees of separation from the problem, doesn't mean we stop being complicit in it.

Public companies have a responsibility to their share holders to maximize profit. Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies. If Amazon stops doing so, someone else will and eventually they will have enough of the market that the responsible company will have to close shop.

Take the example of a multiplayer game. It should not be the responsibility of the player to not exploit the rules of the games to their fullest. It should be the responsibility of the developers to fix exploits and ban/punish gamers who outright attempt to break the system (cheat).

It seems that the political left (which usually drives these movements) would rather put the onus on the companies to change while taking millions in lobbying money, than hold them accountable for their actions.

I recognize that the systemic favoring of republicans in the electoral system, might force the left to keep appearances, lest be viewed as hostile to businesses and lose the vital 5% of the swing electorate. But, that still means, that the problem is lack of electoral reform and not 'Amazon being a greedy company'.

> Public companies have a responsibility to their share holders to maximize profit. Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies. If Amazon stops doing so, someone else will and eventually they will have enough of the market that the responsible company will have to close shop.

> Take the example of a multiplayer game. It should not be the responsibility of the player to not exploit the rules of the games to their fullest. It should be the responsibility of the developers to fix exploits and ban/punish gamers who outright attempt to break the system (cheat).

Those aren't mutually exclusive, IMHO. Instead or in-addition to patching the "exploits," the law could be changed to make it clear that companies have obligations besides solely delivering "value" to their shareholders (IIRC that understanding of companies is actually pretty recent). Obviously it'd take more work to figure out how to do that than an internet comment warrants, but I'm not convinced it's impossible.

> law could be changed to make it clear that companies have obligations besides solely delivering "value" to their shareholders

There in lies the problem. 'Making clear' means codifying it in law and speaking of it in explicit terms rather than being abstract moral concepts.

But few want to talk policy. Because policy is hard. Really really hard. Moralizing on the other hand is easy. Similarly, calling a certain policy bad is a lot easier than suggesting a concrete alternative.

If for one, would love to ground all moral arguments in policy, instead of talking about things in thin air. Sure, it will make discussions more laborious, but at least at the end of them we will have gone somewhere.

> Every legal avenue there is to do, will be used by these companies

Or even illegal, as long as the risk of getting caught and or penalty if caught are sufficiently low compared to the benefit.

And yet you seem to be happy with "Public companies have a responsibility to their share holders to maximize profit." being nominally "codified in law".

(I say nominally because it's not actually clear that this is codified in law, just that there have been a number of lawsuits that have been decided as if it is).