I believe companies should use every inch of leeway in existing laws to do business. It isn't evil, it is rational. However, I believe evil companies are the ones that attempt to change laws to do business. Businesses should not have a voice in law. Intuit is an evil company and they are making the lives of every person in the US worse in order to make a profit.
This take is inconsistent. Lobbying is perfectly legal, so Intuit isn’t being evil, just being rational.
Companies, like people, can be evil while not committing any crimes. Intuit is not even that evil when compared to most larger companies in the US. We only remember it exists during tax season.
> I believe companies should use every inch of leeway in existing laws to do business.
So dark patterns are good? It was good for cigarette companies to discover tobacco is addictive and take advantage of that by selling cigarettes to kids?
After all, this was legal until people fought a brutal grassroots war against tobacco companies to fix it.
I got into a discussion a while ago with a friend of mine that liked to think of themselves as libertarian. No beer was involved, but going to the absurd definitely came out. He tried to take the view that the government should get out of everything. My counter was that very quickly some company would take over enough of each market to effectively become the government and dictate terms to everyone else. My point to him was that -something- fills that void so at least if it is the government doing it there is a slim chance I can influence it. This is a bit indirect to your comments, but my big point is that I don't want companies ever trying to set the bar or come up with morals because their version of 'good' won't be one that is good for society. If we expect them to be 'good' they will define it and I want society to do that, not them. Dark patterns are bad, but we need to start holding our government accountable for not holding companies accountable. We also need to hold ourselves accountable for buying from those companies. I assume every company is adversarial because that is the nature of capitalism and I don't want to slip into the false security of 'they will eventually do the right thing because it is the right thing...'
> I believe companies should use every inch of leeway in existing laws to do business. It isn't evil, it is rational.
This is the exact argument Jeffrey Skilling presented to me to explain his actions at Enron. He further expanded saying, “You would have done the same thing in my position.”
It’s possible to be both evil and rational. Now regardless of the legality of Skilling’s actual actions—when considering whatever viewpoint he convinced himself of—one must consider ethics and whether or not they are intentionally misleading people in their actions. It can absolutely be evil. How many people lost their entire retirement savings when Enron went under?
I think companies should focus on being helpful to humanity instead of being profit maximizing machines, but that probably won't happen in my lifetime.
> I believe companies should use every inch of leeway in existing laws to do business.
No. You can do things that are immoral, harmful, predatory, and generally shitty while still being perfectly legal.
And people who want fewer regulations hampering businesses need to realize that this only works if businesses work within ethical guidelines that are not mandated by law. Otherwise the government will need to step in and protect people.
But to reiterate: Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not evil.
Correct. Not saying the OP is, but many people conflate morality and law. They are completely separate, except for a few laws that might be inspired by moral concerns.
