Comment by pokot0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pokot0 | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with you. I think it is perfectly healthy to criticize companies and even boycott their products if we don't share their values. This is what I referred to by "controlling the market". Unfortunately this has historically provided very little results imo.

What I was referring to is the expectation that this criticism can make the difference; I don't think it can, for mostly one single reason: if you happen to make progress and magically turn 99% of the people running companies ethical, you have created a huge incentive for being evil. Someone acting unethical will reap the benefit without competitor.

I tend to see these dynamics as balances and movement from balances when something changes. I think changing laws changes the balance point and after a shake, the system will settle somewhere else. Trying to persuade managers to be ethical it's just a fight against the balance that you will eventually lose.

Public criticism does not change things only via boycott. I agree with you about boycotts and their at-best questionable usefulness.

The more meaningful aspects are the fact it creates a negative reputation, and that reputation impacts all interactions with the company. A bad reputation adds an additional cost to interacting with you (be it customers, workers, or business partners), and that needs to be constantly paid for somehow.

Additionally, there's some level of 'acceptableness' for the individuals of a company to do unethical things, which also plays a role. You addressed this in your 99% hypothetical, which I would agree with if it was done in a vacuum. However it's not. In practice if 1% of businesses were behaving in some way the rest refused on ethical grounds, lawmakers would be be falling over themselves to address it. Obviously such an example is unlikely to appear, but I hope you get my point. Moving the needle on acceptable behavior also moves the needle on what acceptable regulations of behavior.

I also largely agree on many of these factors being a dynamic balance. It's just that public criticism is already a factor in the current balance. Some level of criticism is required to maintain it, lest we move towards a balance that sees even more bad behavior.

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