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Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

Let's start with the premise that "representative government is the union of the people" and "profit motive is not always the best incentive for action in society", and go from there.

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I dispute that premise. I'd hardly call America "unified" at the present moment; we are in such a state of disunity that many are refusing to accept election results. Pervasive as Amazon, Google, et al. may be, they are still much easier to escape than the United States government.

There's something to be said for Facebook being the cause of America's division right now (amongst many other things obviously).

I'd hardly call America a country with a governmental system that's representative of the people

I would argue that America is a terrible example of government and governing, and that you shouldn't be using it as a comparison in your argument.

Good government is hard, but it's certainly better than a corporation that is legally obligated to put profit ahead of anything else.

Corporations are not legally obligated to put profit ahead of everything else. That's a bad myth that refuses to die. There is absolutely no substance to that claim.

There is no legal obligation to maximize shareholder value.

I don't know of anyone claiming it's a legal obligation. It's a natural obligation, and it's worse.

The shareholders want profit maximised, and with that end, decide upon the board of directors, who decide upon the CEO. If the CEO does not maximise profits, the CEO will not remain the CEO. Therefore, the CEOs of (publicly-traded) companies are obliged to maximise profits – those who do not feel such an obligation are not CEOs.

Literally two posts above yours, the one your parent is replying to, are the words “legally obligated to put profit ahead of anything else.”

Hmm. I could argue that technically there're sometimes contracts with investors, but that's not about public trading; they probably just didn't understand where the obligation comes from.

To clarify: I don’t believe that companies are legally obligated to maximize profits.

I do believe that there are people who claim that companies have that legal obligation, which is what you said you’d not observed.

It's odd to claim companies are obligated to maximize profit in a thread about Amazon, whose retail operation isn't profitable and basically exists because Bezos hypnotized investors into giving him free money forever.

Sure sure, you know what I meant.. Legally in the sense that for _most_ companies, if they don't prioritize profits, they can potentially face shareholder lawsuits, or management gets ousted and replaced by the board, etc..

There's nothing new about the US not being united. The Democrats dispute every election they lose, just as they did in 2016. There is nothing new about it. The US has rarely been united throughout its history in fact. It's borderline a fluke that it has survived this long as one nation.

And if you think it's bad now, it's going to get dramatically worse yet. The largest groups that make up the US today, that dominate its politics and culture, have absolutely nothing in common with eachother and will grow further apart as the years pass. The rancor will get much worse. The populism will get worse. The end result is obvious and unavoidable (and I'm not talking about civil war, that's a redneck fantasy; it's tyranny, oppression, endless strife, and ever worsening dysfunction as the Feds try to contain the unspooling and get ever more paranoid).

> Pervasive as Amazon, Google, et al. may be, they are still much easier to escape than the United States government.

Like it or not, there's always going to be some powerful entity who you cannot escape because it rules the land. The only question is what shape you want that entity to have. Accountability matters, and so democracy is generally a good place to start.

What about starting with the premise that "a successful corporation offers goods or services people want for less cost than competitors" whereas a successful government organization "exhausts their budget every fiscal quarter and successfully demands more". Which is doing more good for the people? I've worked for both and know which I'd choose.

Because someone will soon realise that "a successful corporation offers goods or services people want for less cost than competitors" is a great reason to introduce slave labour to increase efficiency. Gig economy without employment rights and stopping unions is just a step towards that.

Also "exhausts their budget every fiscal quarter and successfully demands more" applies just as much to corporate projects. And given we gov agencies rarely can solve the whole problem, why expect them not to exhaust their budget?

A successful corporation performs its mission smartly and reliably.

This may or may not include specified behaviors, tasks, growth, marketing, sales, profits, goods, services, employees, competitors, etc.

Even corporations without any shareholders are common, found in the non-profit sector, but you do need corporate officers regardless.

Would it be better if there were a couple non-profit corporations with one or two million employees each the size of Amazon or Wal-Mart, to go along with what we have now?

I don't see any reason to accept either of those premises. Empirical evidence says you're 0 for 2.

If you think profit motive, rather than ethics and benefit to society, should control prisons, the provisioning of healthcare, or the education of citizens, there is no middle for us to meet on.

The right-wing (libertarian?) belief here is usually that doing things for the benefit of society doesn't actually benefit society, because irony always wins.

I don't know if this is true, but you'll only talk past each other if you don't acknowledge it.

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