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Comment by gbanfalvi | Hacker News Reader

So... it doesn’t change the actual argument.

> So... it doesn’t change the actual argument.

It kind of does. I mean,it's not like they are practicing what they are preaching. If they really believe that sharing the wealth is the right thing to do then why are they reserving their argument exclusively to other companies and organizations?

It absolutely does. If you argue from a basis of moral consensus, it is precisely an argument against that to argue that the moral consensus is the opposite.

They are not arguing from moral consensus, but merely appearing to. It is useful for a company to appear to take the moral high ground in order to increase profits while also not actually doing so of course. See BLM, and others.

Strictly, I suppose they're making no argument at all since they are merely asserting a fact: Amazon isn't paying more. There is an implicit other statement: "this is notable". And I suspect an implicit third piece "it is notably bad".

None of these are arguments but one could imagine that the last one stems from "because we all think it's bad". Of course, absent justification one could just dismiss that last one out of hand instead.

Yes, it assumes companies are bad because they don't follow individual moral standards, but organizations are not individuals and cannot be judged the same way. I would even go so far as to say that because there are so many people in it that the entire organization is an amoral entity.

I actually disagree with you on this front (that corp behaviour cannot be judged on a moral/immoral scale) but the argument is too long to type out. And in any case it doesn't matter since we agree on the part that matters (there is no justification yet provided for Amazon's actions to be judged immoral).

I actually wrote a big thread on r/changemyview that you could probably find haha, about organizations being amoral entities.

Haha, same username?

Unfortunately not. You'll find it though, I don't want to share my username here publicly.

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