Comment by maus42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maus42 | Hacker News Reader

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Sure, if you are an US citizen, you can argue that it should be US government's job to represent your ideals in the wider world. But your government is not the only party responsible for representing your moral or political positions in the world.

For example, the US government collectively is not particularly famous for 100% morally upstanding behavior. Granted, the US behaves often better than other great powers, and certainly it represents many ideals of democracy and liberty more than other contending powers. But consider the mess that was Iran-Contra affair or the various regimes ranging from unsavory authoritarianism to sheer terrorism (with "disappearances" and torture) CIA supported in Latin America in the name of anti-communism. (God forbid someone propose an idea of land reform in South America or advancing workers' and natives' rights against UFC, despite that's how numerous European countries avoided communism.) Did these actions (and various other questionable shenanigans the US government has been partial to) represent your ethical positions?

It's everyone's job to do it, and what any government does is only part of that. For example, you mentioned AAPL stock owners. According to any sane ethical system, the moral duty of any individual CEO or a member of board or stock owner as a human person with rights and corresponding duties to act ethically overrides their financial or legal duty to maximize corporate profits.

Spot on.

The US Government is supposed to represent the people, and thus must uphold that people's values. The US government is a moral agent.

A person is a moral agent.

Though many here are happy to concede the reality that Apple is comprised of individuals and that it exists as an organisation as a part of society, and just view it as a profit-maximising entity. This is perverse. A corporation is a moral agent, and when it's morality conflicts with it's profits, morality should win. We'd expect nothing less of literally everybody/everything else.

>A corporation is a moral agent

I otherwise agree, but I don't know if Apple is a moral agent - that discussion will into quite complex philosophical issues. But certainly each individual person making decisions at Apple is a moral agent.

> But certainly each individual person making decisions at Apple is a moral agent

I am not so sure that's true. If every agent is acting morally, then does the sum of those actions constitute morality? I think so.

Apple has some agents who are not moral agents. I suspect that all corps are like this.

A “moral agent” is not “an agent that acts according to correct moral principles” but “an agent with the appropriate facilties that morality or immorality can be attributed to it”.

Apple certainly does have agents that are not moral agents (e.g., automatons like Siri), but for a different reason than you suggest.

> the appropriate facilties that morality or immorality can be attributed to it

i m saying that the top brass making decisions are not acting as moral agents, because they don't feel the responsibility of any of the choices insofar as it increases the profit of the company.

Not feeling responsibility doesn't make you not a moral agent (whether you feel responsible is a separate issue from whether you have the capacity which makes it sensible for moral responsibility to be assigned to you), and adopting “advancing the profit of the company” as a value that overrides all other concerns (and that one is responsible for), in any case, is making a moral decision (that is, one about morality, whether or not any other observer or any objective morality that may or may not exist would paint it as a morally correct.)

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