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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

> Every company is motivated by profits, and yet I have vastly different opinions on the behaviours of different companies.

Wrong, it is survival bias. Not every company is motivated by profits, but the ones that survive long enough for you to notice are. If the company isn't motivated by profits, is simply doesn't last long enough to be a major player.

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That's fair, I should clarify: every public is motivated by profits.

I don't actually think it's survivorship bias, my local coffee shop is good to me for little other reason than the owner and I get on well, and they're not likely to go out of business any time soon. I just didn't specify my point well enough.

Your little coffee shop goes out of business if they don't attract enough business, if they have competitors that provide a better product for example. But even then, you are rewarding their good behavior directly, if you want to scale that up, you and and a bunch of your friends will need to stop buying Apple products to let them know you find their behavior to not be of your liking (and become patrons of the companies that do conform to your moral values). But scaling morality is hard without some sort of restricted market intervention.

I'm going to disagree with you there. I agree that their bottom line benefits from their being nice to me, but that's not the same as being motivated by profit. Similarly, I'm not looking to obsessively optimise for the best product.

I find your description distastefully cynical, but more importantly not particularly in line with my experience of how people behave.

I guess we have to agree to disagree. In order to get Apple to stop their behavior, you either have to regulate morality and go beyond not just buying their products, but forcing others to not buy them either.

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