Making children work in sweatshops was legal... up until it wasn't. May I assume that every corporation and individual was obligated to work children in sweatshops up until it was made illegal?
The government is the people and the laws tend to reflect what they feel is acceptable because otherwise it would already be made illegal. Corporations are also these very same people and so they'll follow the same standards. I believe your issue has nothing to do with corporations but more about different cultures and values, and perhaps the efficiency of a government that can keep pace with the population.
Where is the difference that would allow us to condemn the companies for maximizing profits by use labor laws but not condemn them for maximizing profits using tax laws?
>Also nothing is that simple.
Yet the previous statement seemed to have been made quite simply, an idea that if you take advantage of any law in your favor, you cannot condemn someone who takes advantage of any other law in their favor.
Exactly; OP makes a simple, matter-of-fact statement, and then proceeds to say "nothing is that simple" when they get challenged? Seems like a double standard to me.
Money isn't people.
It is not, however, a company's responsibility to build highways, or to figure out how to finance the building of said highways, or to set up and fund public education, or to hire and pay police, is the point. When it becomes a company's responsibility to do so, we march gleefully into one of several dystopian cyberpunk science fictions (pick your favorite) ;)
For example, Google takes advantage of government contracts and grants, paid for by taxes. They also take advantage of the highway, city, water, power, education, housing, copyright and trademark laws, unemployment insurance, and legal (that is, the court system) infrastructure largely built and paid for (directly, by grants, or subsidies) using taxes.
You choose how to spend your time and if you spend it earning an income then you're taxed to pay for the other things that let society function so that you can do so. How much you earn in a given time is irrelevant.
The difference beyond people vs money is that a company with shareholders is not obligated to use child labor but is obligated to reduce tax expenditures. It's not simple because what do you consider more ethical? Tax minimization or hiring children to increase profits?
Not doing so would definitely be against the interests of the company.