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Comment by piva00 | Hacker News Reader

It's what private companies are supposed to do since adopting the Jack Welch way of doing business. Before that was thought all around MBA schools businesses had a social duty to society and their employees as well.

Touting that as the only reality that could exist is not knowing the past, shareholders-first mentality and extract-as-much-profit-as-possible types of business are a thing from the 80s onwards, after Welch gutted GE's engineering prowess to become just another financial scheme.

Finance capitalism is the main issue, businesses are supposed to provide value to society first which they can profit on after.

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Unfortunately, people actually need to make money first and then help society second.

Survival basics are to help yourself first and then help others. Since neither people nor businesses can survive without generating money, this situation we are in seems natural.

Take away people's dependency on money for basic needs, and you will get a lot more businesses that can safely operate for the good of society first and profit second.

I am no fan of Jack Welch, and I do blame him to some extent for things being frustrating now, but honestly it just feels like he's "yet another horrible leader of a company".

You can look at basically any capitalist during the Gilded Age or the 1920's and see plenty of clear cut examples of them valuing profit substantially more than "doing the right thing". They didn't treat their workers terribly well, they destroyed large chunks of the environment, and they became richer than anyone could possibly imagine.

Sure, people like Carnegie would later talk about "social responsibility" of rich people, and to some extent I'm sure he even believed what he was saying, but that doesn't really detract from the fact that he still fundamentally made most of his money off suffering of others.

I'm certainly no expert, but I believe all that historical talk about corporations doing the right thing by their workers (and by extension, society) came after many years of struggle (unions) and regulation (trust busting etc).

This is just an idea that I have, I'm not sure if it's even true. In any case, corporate speak is and always has been tuned to what the public expects of the corporation (current example is the whole LGBTQ+ signalling). Don't get it twisted: corporations aren't people and they don't really have feelings. They don't care about you; they're incapable of caring about you.

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