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Comment by sudosysgen | Hacker News Reader

Or, maybe address the systematic realities that make companies act this way over and over for centuries.

You mean people? Companies are ran by people, people want to get rich, people are the problem.

The only change I see working is to hold accountable not just the companies themselves but the decision makers too.

Companies are not people and are not run by people, they have specific legal requirements and power structures that mean that the operate very differently from how most people that compose them want them to.

In any case, how people act is largely a consequence of their environment, i-e, the system. These can be environmental, political (as in, power relations), cultural, etc...

> specific legal requirements

Stop leaning on this, because it's not true, just a cop-out.

Individual corporate humanism isn't a crime.

Corporate humanism isn't always a crime. Sometimes it is.

But even when it isn't, it is a sub-optimal strategy compared to maximizing as long as those that make the decisions have differing interests than those that bear them. And if they do not have differing interests, then why separate them?

And what's the solution? Do you propose killing everyone that worked for the companies in question during WWII? What about those not in Germany or occupied terretories? Since most of those people are long since dead, do you propose killing their children and grandchildren?

Anything done today for crimes 80 years ago will only serve to hurt those that weren't even around, and not really help those that were harmed.

You've just described a superset of what I'm talking about. These goals go hand-in-hand, and I'd say understanding the systemic reality is a necessity for dismantlement and/or reform.

I agree. I'm just suggesting that there is not really a fundamental distinction between genocidal corporations and non-genocidal corporations, rather that the issue probably comes from deeper.

I mean, say what you will about IBM helping the Nazis, but I think a more relevant question is what made a country act in the way Germany did in WW2.

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