Sewing-Machine comments on Imperfect Levers - Less Wrong

6 Post author: blogospheroid 17 November 2010 07:12PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (36)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: mwaser 17 November 2010 11:06:02PM *  3 points [-]

For-profit corporations, as a matter of law, have the goal of making money and their boards are subject to all sorts of legal consequences and other unpleasantnesses if they don't optimize that goal as a primary objective (unless some other goal is explicitly written into the corporate bylaws as being more important than making a profit -- and even then, there are profit requirements that must be fulfilled to avoid corporate dissolution or conversion to a non-profit -- and very few corporations have such provisions).

Translation

Corporations = powerful, intelligent entities with the primary goal of accumulating power (in the form of money).

Comment author: [deleted] 06 December 2010 02:49:47AM 0 points [-]

I hear this point a lot, but I've never looked in to it. Are there any famous cases of companies being sued or prosecuted for being insufficiently evil in the pursuit of profits?