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Comment by yalogin | Hacker News Reader

Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups? Snapchat here and Uber all year. Is it because they are startups and someho the HN crowd assumes they will be good citizen? The same thing if done by some pharma company or may be some division inside Johnson and Johnson would go unnoticed and expected even.

It looks to me that most people on here work for startups and new companies and some how want to work in a field that has higher morals and ethics. Why would a sales guy try to behave differently and not make a sale? We have seen this again and again with other sales teams from Yelp and others. I am not trying to explain the actions of sales people just to understand where the outrage is coming from.

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People should expect ethical behavior not only from startups but from any entity private or public. As a customer we have the right, or even an obligation, to say - If you're not ethical we don't want to do business with you. It's as simple as that.

> Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups?

People expect ethics and morals from people. Startups are run by people.

Pharma companies are run by people; Monsanto is run by people. And yet nobody expects ethics and morals from those: that was the point of the parent.

People don't expect ethics and morals from all people or organizations in the same amount.

Maybe you don't. I do. I know other people who do.

Orgs are made of people. I prefer to interact with ethical people over unethical people. Don't see what's difficult about that.

Running with a pack may embolden people to act unethically, but if anything, that's more reason to shun bad actors.

> And yet nobody expects ethics and morals from those

Not true, many people expect that and criticize them if they fail to meet this standard.

What specifically has Monsanto done lately that was unethical or immoral?

Promote pesticide-resistant GMO crops in order to drive pesticide sales, for one.

How is that unethical or immoral?

GMO!!!

> People expect ethics and morals from people. Startups are run by people.

I agree with your sentiment. That said, would you expect ethics and morals from a CEO that organized a Sally Hemings[1]-Thomas Jefferson party? Would you expect ethics and morals from a CEO that used to joke about urinating on women? Which is why I would avoid interaction with that startup.

[1] Sally Hemings was the 14 year old black slave girl that the 44 year old Thomas Jefferson had 6 kids with.

[2] http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy...

[3] http://www.salon.com/2014/05/29/6_leaked_emails_that_ruined_...

> Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups?

I think this depends on what you mean by 'expect'. If we believe that they will act morally at the expense of their own interests, that is probably naive in most cases. But if we 'expect' them to act morally in the sense that we hold them to a certain ethical standard, and get upset if they don't live up to it, then the expectation can to some extent be self-fulfilling: if bad behaviour will hurt their reputation, they have to take that into account when making a decision, and in some cases that will cause the right thing and the self-interested thing to converge.

It's not that people expect ethics and morals from startups. It's that people expect their ethics and morals from startups. To some people, not allowing the NRA to advertise in this context is the only ethical choice. To others, the very question is horrifyingly unethical.

Many of us are not aware that corporations do not have moral standards. You can coerce them to pretend they do, but if it was up to corporation we would still have child labor today.

I think the question you should ask is why can we not expect humans to act ethically. We are all human after all.

Empirically, do humans presently, and have humans in the past been observed to, "act ethically"? And, of course, there's a tremendous diversity about what exactly is ethical.

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