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Comment by finnjohnsen2 | Hacker News Reader

> 90's era Microsoft wasn't evil for the sake of being evil

You are to forgiving. I don't care too much about the why behind the evil in the software business and this is probably why my rants fall under Godwin's law too often. I won't this time.

> They have a responsibility to their shareholders to try and maximize their share price

... but I was damn close.

I agree with your whole point about Microsoft. But I don't think it's the same company anymore, I like some of the recent stuff, and I trust their lack of monopoly on the web. For now.

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> You are to forgiving

I think the point is that companies aren't good or evil, they are amoral non-aligned super intelligences that maximise shareholder profits.

Is it the intent or outcome that is the evil?

If I am intent on killing a million people, but can't, but a company kills a million people via inadvertent faulty products, which is evil?

If a hurricane kills a thousand people is it evil? It's not really clear whether we're better off trying to treat corporations as moral actors and constantly being surprised when they aren't, or whether we should treat them as amoral quasi-natural processes no one has full control over and construct regulations around them the same way we do for earthquakes.

We should still treat corporations as moral actor (without being naive of course) because they need to be accountable for what they do. This is why you can sue a company. You can't sue an earthquake.

Some companies try to do the right things too. Bad corporate behavior should not be normalized this much.

I like the metaphor, but... a hurricane doesn't write values documents or employee handbooks. These things do inform actions in many orgs, and constrain opportunities to a degree.

I disagree with this larger idea (that others here are implying more indirectly) that companies are all the same, and like some force of nature. They are guided and there are better and worse ones.

Having said all that, I'm still an anti-capitalist to the extent that one can be one ;)

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