It's a valid criticism if you don't think that "Corporations are supposed to maximize profits" should be true. When anything can be justified because it maximizes profits it becomes very, very easy to be a technically law abiding unethical company which is a net negative on society.
You do want clear rules. An extreme case of vagueness would be: pay whatever taxes you want, but we will criticize and punish you until we think you've paid enough. That would be neither efficient nor fair.
In video game terms, maybe there should be a convention of not taking advantage of exploits, but it's often unclear what's the intention of a tax rule, so fixing the exploit is better.
> It's a valid criticism if you don't think that "Corporations are supposed to maximize profits" should be true. When anything can be justified because it maximizes profits it becomes very, very easy to be a technically law abiding unethical company which is a net negative on society.
Isn't this why society comes together to form a government and pass laws to prevent these sorts of behaviours?
Not every corporation will be looking to maximize profits, but they're generally all looking to maximize something typically at the expense of something else. From a selfish perspective, externalising your costs is a good thing.
No, people form (limited) government to prevent abuse from government.
The idea that a company could abuse you in any substantial way (other than fraud, violating contract terms) must have seemed like an edge case (only the East India Company would have been large enough to present such a threat circa 1775).
So, maybe your claim would work if you consider companies to be a form of government, which is an entirely defensible position.
Have you ever been in a group of friends and played a board game where everyone was playing casually to have a good time, except for that one guy? MtG fans call this type of player Spike [1]. Other gaming circles refer to these players as munchkins and they’ve been immortalized in the card game Munchkin [2]. I think most people have played with someone like this before. Their obsession with winning at all costs ruins the game for everyone else.
This is what big corporations are like! They put mom & pop out of business. They drive down wages and destroy the environment. They play one government against the other in order to minimize their taxes while maximizing their subsidies. They are the Spikes of society. We try to fight them with legislation but our laws are always one step behind.
If Google is making an announcement like this, you can be sure they’ve found something else that works even better for them. You can’t expect them to give anything away without a fight.
Human beings also self-organise and incorporate into groups, which may individually have their own distinct aims. I'm not sure what guilt and empathy have to do with organisations of people though.
"Good faith" is also pretty meaningless, as it doesn't really describe any specific behaviour or motivation. What happens when two individuals (or groups) come into conflict trying to optimise their own outcomes "in good faith"?
> They play one government against the other in order to minimize their taxes while maximizing their subsidies. They are the Spikes of society. We try to fight them with legislation but our laws are always one step behind.
I, as an individual, choose to use a low tax savings scheme to minimize my tax burden. I also make sure to claim every tax credit (or subsidy) that I'm entitled to. Am I a 'spike' in society?
Have you been using “Double Irish” accounting? Do you keep your money offshore and lobby the government for favourable laws that let you repatriate the money while avoiding billions in taxes?
No, probably not. You’re doing what normal people do as part of the game. You probably don’t have your own accounting department with a payroll in the millions whose entire mission is to scour the tax codes of every country in the world, looking for loopholes like this.
A “Spike” is someone who will stop at nothing to win. They bring in the most obscure rules and take maximum advantage of every possibility, convenience be damned. You just sound like a sensible person who makes the best of the laws as they were designed for people like you.
There is nothing inherently ethical or unethical about paying more or less taxes. You should pay the taxes you owe, but the law is what tells you how much you owe. Here, for example, the United States believes it should collect taxes on profits a U.S. company makes on sales in Europe. While that is itself dubiously moral, that's the law. But how can it then be immoral to take advantage of Irish tax laws--which Ireland deliberately adopted to encourage companies to move IP and skilled workers to Ireland--that is also legal under U.S. law?
Without contextual detail, paying more than the minimum taxes required by law is not necessarily the moral choice.
Dont expect better from other people if you cant fight for your own ideas.
Debatable - capitalism took 7 billion people out of extreme poverty, eradicated diseases, improved literacy, decreased child mortality, and increase life expectancy. All thanks to companies maximizing profits while abiding by the democratically enacted laws.