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617 points jbegley | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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a_shovel ◴[] No.42938313[source]
I initially thought that this was an announcement for a new pledge and thought, "they're going to forget about this the moment it's convenient." Then I read the article and realized, "Oh, it's already convenient."

Google is a megacorp, and while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil), they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality, and any appearance that they are is purely a marketing exercise.

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Retric ◴[] No.42938601[source]
> while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil),

I think megacorps being evil is universal. It tends to be corrupt cop evil vs serial killer evil, but being willing to do anything for money has historically been categorized as evil behavior.

That doesn’t mean society would be better or worse off without them, but it would be interesting to see a world where companies pay vastly higher taxes as they grow.

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1. jongjong ◴[] No.42942918[source]
Agreed, I think part of it boils down to the concept of 'limited liability' itself which is a euphemism for 'the right to carry out some degree of evil without consequence.'

Also, scale plays a significant part as well. Any high-exposure organization which operates on a global scale has access to an extremely large pool of candidates to staff its offices... And such candidate pools necessarily include a large number of any given personas... Including large numbers of ethically-challenged individuals and criminals. Without an interview process which actively selects for 'ethics', the ethically-challenged and criminal individuals have a significant upper-hand in getting hired and then later wedging themselves into positions of power within the company.

Criminals and ethically-challenged individuals have a bigger risk appetite than honest people so they are more likely to succeed within a corporate hierarchy which is founded on 'positive thinking' and 'turning a blind eye'. On a global corporate playing field, there is a huge amount of money to be made in hiding and explaining away irregularities.

A corporate employee can do something fraudulent and then hold onto their jobs while securing higher pay, simply by signaling to their employer that they will accept responsibility if the scheme is exposed; the corporate employer is happy to maintain this arrangement and feign ignorance while extracting profits so long as the scheme is kept under wraps... Then if the scheme is exposed, the corporations will swiftly throw the corporate employee under the bus in accordance to the 'unspoken agreement'.

The corporate structure is extremely effective at deflecting and dissipating liability away from itself (and especially its shareholders) and onto citizens/taxpayers, governments and employees (as a last layer of defense). The shareholder who benefits the most from the activities of the corporation is fully insulated from the crimes of the corporation. The scapegoats are lined up, sandwiched between layers of plausible deniability in such a way that the shareholder at the end of the line can always claim complete ignorance and innocence.