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Comment by bluecalm | Hacker News Reader

You can't expect companies to fight for greater good and sacrifice their interests for the overall good. In fact it's against the law for them to do that. Amazon hires a lot of people and in many countries pay reasonably well. With taxes it does what the law allows.

If you want to change those things start with changing the law, ending policies hurting the working class (limiting low skill migration would be the first step) and getting rid of ridiculous taxes like corporate income tax you claim Amazon dodged (while in fact it pays what the law requires it to pay).

Blaming the player for playing the game well while taking care of what they are legally obliged to do (shareholder value) is neither smart nor constructive.

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> In fact it's against the law for them to do that.

No, it’s not. The corporation’s interests must align with the shareholders, but there’s no law that says short-term profit is the only legal goal. Companies can and have sacrificed in order to build the community.

Public trading often leads to that however with activist investors.

Anyone who sees them acting suboptomally for the short term can buy in, pressure for more short term interests and lobby to get their way then jump off before it collapses with their gains. Even without that scheming continuous gains are demanded generally.

>You can't expect companies to fight for greater good and sacrifice their interests for the overall good.

You can if the society and law demands that. E.g. throw them a few huge fines for using bad labor practices (e.g. workers not allowed to go to the toilet when they need to, firing pregnant women, other kinds of discrimination) and let's see what happens.

I completely agree. One legal change that needs to happen to preserve the free market: company with a habit of employees using social assistance should not get tax breaks (or any other help) from the government. The taxpayer should not be subsidizing the paycheck of Amazon employees. The burden is on Amazon to pay their employees a competitive wage, it's their problem not mine.

Otherwise they have no incentive to pay their employees a competitive wage.

Without competitive wages you have no free market, you just have a corporate welfare state, where the cost of paying workers is taken from the workers themselves thru taxation. That's basically what some UBI shills want. They want state taxation and welfare to replace the onus of corporations to pay competitive wages to employees.

>I completely agree. One legal change that needs to happen to preserve the free market: company with a habit of employees using social assistance should not get tax breaks (or any other help) from the government.

No enterprise-size company should get any tax break, period. Only small companies or enterprises that can show they had a bad run (and e.g. might otherwise need to close).

Add to that a rule that if they then just go and take their offices/factories abroad (where they get a big tax break) they get hit with the equivalent savings in import tax is they want to sell in the domestic market.

Combine that with tiny or no tax for individuals (like it has been before the 20th century and is still in several places).

Oh no, the foxes eat us, that is their job...

"Why dont we get rid of the foxes, we have the power to do that"

No, no, that seems like a silly idea, status quo is the best.

> In fact it's against the law for them to do that.

No it isn't.

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