@Marina: I know this is the rhetoric we’re all raised with, but I think it’s quite fallacious. Why can’t corporations be expected to be ethical and moral? It just seems silly to me. Who gets to say that? “I’m a soldier, my purpose is to kill. Don’t ask me to be moral.” or “I’m a racer. My purpose is to win. Don’t expect me to be ethical.” It just doesn’t fly.
There’s only one other area in our society where this sort of logic is so prominent–criminal justice. I always get in hot water for adding this to the mix, but criminal justice in this country is just as ludicrous, here’s why: we try to get to the truth, not by aiming at the truth, but by having a rules-based competition where two sides in a case try to win. Not try to get to the truth. Then, we get these outcomes and supposedly, because everyone was trying to win, we somehow magically get the truth. Same thing with corporations, and capitalism more generally. “Everyone try to make a crap-ton of money, and somehow, magically, we’ll feed everyone and keep our kids healthy and take care of our land.” This argument only serves a small group of people who get the spoils, and thus can avoid all the hardships that the system causes the rest of us.
The real point of human endeavors is to provide for the wants and needs of society. It’s not profit. We want hospitals to make people well. We want edible goods to sustain us. We want entertaining gadgets to entertain us. What corporations do is the stuff of life and civilization. We have companies to build boats so we can visit our relatives, ship our stuff across the globe, and go on vacations. That’s what they’re for. So hold them to the standards we hold anything and anyone else who participates in society.