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Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

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Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#21

Post by dustincoates »

resource_waste wrote: post #2

Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged harshly otherwise. A company uses psychology tricks against its customers(aka Ads/Marketing) making them feel status insecure or a group outsider, totally fine. Actually, those blue bubbles were a great idea, I made sooo much money on stocks. Really feel bad fo…

> Companies are amoral

It's a common refrain, but there are no companies acting--there are people within a larger organization who are acting. You say "[a] company uses psychology tricks." Well, no, people within the company have made decisions to do that. There's no way for the company to act on its own.

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#22

Post by robertlagrant »

notRobot wrote: post #9
robertlagrant wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is some power sharing agreement between government, corporations, and to a significantly lesser extent workers/consumers. We only judge that latter group on morals. As in we don't judge government or corporation on morals? Of course people do that.

Systems do not. People do, but those judgements have no impacts.

So who is the "we"?

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#23

Post by neonlights84 »

fifteen1506 wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Entrepreneurs! Hah, this is Boeing, they are anything but entrepreneurs. They are the government-endorsed American aerospace monopoly, stifling innovation. And "communist" is just a bad word used by people in power to silence and stigmatize dissenters.

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#24

Post by danaris »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #11
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. This is not true. Some company’s value proposition is explicitly moral virtue, eg organic food brands. They tend to be family-owned SMO rather than international publicly traded corporations. The issue has more to do with scale and diffusion of responsibility.

Unless those organic food brands are structured as non-profits, they'll eventually need to make compromises on their value proposition, balanced in a way that shareholders/owners get profits while (hopefully) still provide a net-positive to society. So far, not many for-profit companies have been successful long-term in balancing those two things, as net-positive for society is not strictly necessary for the ultimate…

In addition to what sibling commenter cqqxo4zV46cp says, you are assuming that either all these companies are publicly traded or a majority of their shareholders see themselves as investors rather than owners.

I know nothing particular about the ownership structure of organic food brands, but you cannot simply assume that these things are true. It is perfectly possible for such a brand to be wholly owned by its founders, who maintain an ethos of putting good food and the environment above maximum profit.

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#25

Post by huygens6363 »

resource_waste wrote: post #2

Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged harshly otherwise. A company uses psychology tricks against its customers(aka Ads/Marketing) making them feel status insecure or a group outsider, totally fine. Actually, those blue bubbles were a great idea, I made sooo much money on stocks. Really feel bad fo…

> Companies are amoral

This is a feature, not a bug.

We are system creators and let those systems do the work. We dislike getting our hands dirty and not just physically.

Companies are thinly veiled machines ran by grinding oiled up humans as cogs in intricate patterns that seem to produce useful results.

This is not a problem in and of itself, but we have to be honest about what we are doing and what the true endgame is.

“Powerful” people are just the top cogs in these machines and replaceable like all other cogs.

One day we will find out no one runs anything and we have slowly and inadvertently ceded total control to The Machine and have been ceding it for a long, long time already.

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#26

Post by cduzz »

resource_waste wrote: post #2

Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged harshly otherwise. A company uses psychology tricks against its customers(aka Ads/Marketing) making them feel status insecure or a group outsider, totally fine. Actually, those blue bubbles were a great idea, I made sooo much money on stocks. Really feel bad fo…

horseshit

Companies are their leadership.

I've worked places where I was actively encouraged to look the other way and I've worked places where I've been actively encouraged to do the right thing.

If someone's saying "they gotta be shady because shareholder value, yo" they're looking for an excuse.

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#27

Post by [deleted] »

resource_waste wrote: post #2

Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged harshly otherwise. A company uses psychology tricks against its customers(aka Ads/Marketing) making them feel status insecure or a group outsider, totally fine. Actually, those blue bubbles were a great idea, I made sooo much money on stocks. Really feel bad fo…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#28

Post by aredox »

For all people worrying about AI "alignment":

We already have autonomous entities who are a danger to Humanity. They are called firms.

(No wonder that it's a bunch of very ruthless CEOs who seem the most worried by rogue AIs. But the lack of self-reflection - both with them and with the talking heads who invite them on conferences - is flabbergasting to watch)

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#29

Post by dmix »

indymike wrote: post #13
resource_waste wrote: post #2

Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged harshly otherwise. A company uses psychology tricks against its customers(aka Ads/Marketing) making them feel status insecure or a group outsider, totally fine. Actually, those blue bubbles were a great idea, I made sooo much money on stocks. Really feel bad fo…

> Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. If you were to make a Venn diagram of amoral and illegal (including civil malfeasance) have a pretty large overlap. Eventually, the illegal part gets people (even CEOs) sued, fired and/or jailed, but the company might continue if it can afford to pay the legal bills. > These big companies are applauded for being amoral because their stock prices go up. I don'…

> Society has decided that closing down large employers is a cure worse than the disease.

This sort of thinking is exactly why companies like Boeing get a free pass to do whatever it wants. Local govs protect them like the mob because "jobs" and then Congress panics every time they see the market only has 1-2 options for national security stuff and then reinforces monopolies that slowly eat away at the country's competitive advantage for short term relief. And all were left with is the same small group of untouchable, completely mediocre mega corporations living off past glory when there was actual real competition and risk.

Every time you kick the can you just delay getting the medicine you need. Then instead of having a wildly successful company making new products and dominating the global market - which is something employees and govs benefit from via salaries/taxes/local development, foreign competition takes those jobs or protectionism creepingly increases the cost of doing business because a dying corpse is propped up. Then employees get squeezed and suddenly the mega corporation is getting billions in welfare. And the public gets worse and worse products, which impact other industries that depend on them.

Re: Boeing retaliated against its own engineers working for FAA, union says

#30

Post by soco »

dustincoates wrote: post #21
resource_waste wrote: post #2

Companies are amoral, they literally can't be otherwise. I'm not sure where that puts humans in an effort to defend ourselves. We must be moral, we are judged harshly otherwise. A company uses psychology tricks against its customers(aka Ads/Marketing) making them feel status insecure or a group outsider, totally fine. Actually, those blue bubbles were a great idea, I made sooo much money on stocks. Really feel bad fo…

> Companies are amoral It's a common refrain, but there are no companies acting--there are people within a larger organization who are acting. You say "[a] company uses psychology tricks." Well, no, people within the company have made decisions to do that. There's no way for the company to act on its own.

The same theory goes further, arguing that whatever consequences the CEO/management would suffer, there will always be others to step up and continue doing the same. My opinion is however that at some point the bad behavior will be deterred, if these consequences are real... so let's just do it asap, at least we can get a petty revenge on those evildoers. Ah, but we cannot do it because we are not lawmakers?
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