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Comment by notriskfree | Hacker News Reader

The other problem with "Public companies are inherently evil by default" is that saying that "the whole system is wrong", is just providing leaders with an excuse. Public Companies can serve their customers, shareholders, and look after their employees while still being ethical, there is always a choice, and there are many positive benefits to behaving ethically, for one, it means you are a trustworthy company to deal with.

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It's like the story of the scorpion and the frog.

If you know that the system is broken and it is setup in a way that rewards bad behavior, what do you think is the best course of action: to expect that exceptional individuals will be always in charge to avoid the mistakes, or to fix the system so that even normal, fallible humans can be at helm and not having everyone else worried about potential abuses?

>fix the system so that even normal, fallible humans can be at helm and not having everyone else worried about potential abuses?

I assume normal and fallible humans are the ones who are going to setup this new system that will prevent abuse?

I don't see why not. Normal humans make mistakes, can't manually manage memory safely, are bad at building safe buildings without experience and standards and guidelines, and naturally fall into unsafe food preparation habits.

Still, we have set up memory safe practices and languages and standards, building standards and regulations, and food safety regulations that work quite well. Just because humans make mistakes and are fallible doesn't mean that humans are incapable of working to prevent mistakes and the consequences of human fallibility.

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have rules and laws and whatnot. It sounded like the person I was responding to thought it would be a silver bullet. I was trying to push back saying it wouldn't be perfect. We can improve things, but since the rule makers are also fallible there will always be loopholes and other issues.

Yes, so? Isn't that the exact purpose of institutions?

If normal people (shareholders, c levels, etc) are going to engage in bad behavior then why do you think other normal people (lawmakers) are not? If lawmakers are going to be rewarded from bad behavior then we can't fix the rules / laws.

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't try, but it isn't really silver bullet.

This is why I said about institutions. Lawmakers are (or should be) subject to public scrutiny.

An employee from a corporation benefits from a corporation that abuses their power. Ordinary citizens that vote for a corrupt politician do not, and have no invested interest in them.

I agree, but until something comes to light abuses could still be happening. I was mostly pushing back on the idea that a system can be created that would allow the average person to not pay attention. I think individuals must be vigilant even if we think we have a good system.

I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been.

"Not worrying about it" is not "not paying attention", maybe that is the point that you assumed more than I intended to convey with my comment.

It's less about matter of eliminating abuse, and more about damage reduction. We can have systems that even if someone screws up, the consequences are not catastrophic.

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