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*Originally posted by Tominator2
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**True, there can be more than one possibility. I hold that a corporation can, and many do make profit while making people’s lives better through better drugs, more affordable food, safer cars, time saving devices, etc. But they wont, and can’t do it if it is not profitable. They look at teh set of what is profitable, and then choose the subset from it. If they did not do this, they would be a charity, not a business.
Look, I can fail to take actions that demonstrate my moral character and still not be “immoral.” If I do no harm, but still act in the best interest of myself and family (shareholdres) am I immoral? But I don’t think that a coporation can be immoral. Only individuals in it can have this quality.
Corporations are amoral which can be good. By analogy, imagine a very moral Judge. You are arrested for having a legal abortion. THe jury finds you innocent, but the judge gives a direct verdict to convict you of murder because it is the moral thing to do. Amoralityis not necessarily bad.
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Some other reasons people dislike (large) corps:[list]
[li]they’re effectively immune to punishment[/li][/quote]
except being disbanded by the justice department, fined, refused business licenses, sued into oblivion…
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[li]they’re immortal (a heck of an advantage)[/li][/quote]
really? no corp has ever gone out of business, been crushed by the competition, bankrupted by a lawsuit? I did not know that.
Unaccountable? You mean to people they harm (though civil actions), to OSHA,to the SEC, To the Division of Labor, to the Health Department to the EPA? Didn’t some smokers just get $145 Billion from a corporation? OSHA has unilaterally shut down some of our locations before. No appeals process, and $7,000 per day in fines until we complied. I would say we are pretty accountable.