These sorts of statements always scare me a bit. First, businesses are still required to give maximum benefit to shareholders.
Second, even if this was the goal of a business, it then leaves it up to businesses(boards?, CEOs?) to define things like "ethically", "important benefits", "diversity" etc. These aren't things you could get all people to agree on in the first place- hence the whole democracy thing we do. A lot easier to make these statements then turn them into policies.
Let businesses do what they do best - give them a set of constraints (laws) and let them maximize value. If they do "good" things as well, great, if not, fine. If we don't like the outcomes (environmental damage, inequality) change the rules to change the value equation.
Gestures like this, sometimes even coupled withe genuine action, are what businesses do to avoid those explicit constraints being created. "Look, we're being reasonable, no need to force us to."
> First, businesses are still required to give maximum benefit to shareholders.
I hear this over and over. What statute demands this?
You are using it this way, but I have many times heard terrible corporate behavior dismissed because they were simply following the law that they must maximize shareholder returns.
This is scary, but it is important we recognize that we can be controlled and have our behaviour modified by altering our environment - and that is can be a good things.
Who hasn't delete Steam from their computer for a few weeks, thrown out junk food or set up a good workspace in order to promote a behavior in ourselves we want to cultivate, to be more like the person we want to be?
The important thing is that in those situations our environment remained under our control and conscious, and we need to ensure our personal and digital environment remain under our control, and its goals are transparent - and I am not sure companies like Google do or will always agree.
The key thing to keep in mind here is incentives and motivation.
You have a motivation toward self improvement, you make a change to your environment, monitor it, and see what happens. You want to increase your physical fitness, awareness, education, life position, finances, etc. and you make corresponding changes where you and yours are the primary beneficiaries.
Google has a motivation to deliver value to their shareholders. They want to deliver more, so they take advantage of their privileged position in our lives and change our environment for us without asking, monitor it, and see what happens. They have far more capability for analysis and, considering the scale, far more financial motivation to make tiny adjustments that we would pass over in our own optimizations.
Is it necessarily evil or bad for us? No, it doesn't have to be, but I have very little faith in Google to make any choices that even border on altruistic when it's far more profitable to exploit us. Let's remember that fundamentally they are an advertising company, and that drives most of the money in the business; advertising isn't just ads as we know them, but fundamentally the business of changing your mind, suggesting things, and influencing your behaviour to make you exchange some money for some service or good.
When you have a privileged position of influence, and you're willing to sell it to literally anyone who signs up, there is clearly a lot of potential for abuse.
No, it doesn't have to be, but I have very little faith in Google to make any choices that even border on altruistic when it's far more profitable to exploit us.
I think there's a case to be made here that Google's motivations can mirror those of the users and that it's in Google's best long term interest for that to be the case.
It seems obvious to me that a company that can be aligned with their customer's desires will have the most longevity, which may mean forgoing temporary, short term revenue gains.
I'm not so naiive to think that it currently is the state of things, or that it's simple for this to be the case - quite the opposite. Rather, my point is that there is no law of economics that guarantees users and corporations must be in conflict or that corporations will always do better financially by exploiting users to the users' detriment (or that a competitor that does that will beat one that doesn't).
> Rather, my point is that there is no law of economics that guarantees users and corporations must be in conflict or that corporations will always do better financially by exploiting users to the users' detriment (or that a competitor that does that will beat one that doesn't).
But isn't there?
I think the core point of Meditations on Moloch[0] was that there kind of is, that in the limit, competitive environments will always sacrifice every value other than the one over which they're competing, and that an "AI god" would probably be the only thing that's strong enough to break these chains.
I mean nothing written here isn't already covered more thoroughly in undergraduate economics curricula.
However those don't conflict with my point that there is nothing preventing a firm and the sum of their users from having strictly aligned goals in the context of their relationship.
Competition simply means that there could be other firms who may be able to align their goals with users goals more tightly, and run the other firm out of business. Much more to be probed here, like consistency, short and long term goals and desire/goal uncertainty on the part of the user and firm. None of those seem to be intractable issues.
Good point until you dragged Google into it. They're no different than the tobacco companies of 60 years ago who were getting doctors to say smoking was good for you. Or the makers of junk food and Steam in your examples who would really prefer that you not toss their stuff, but you do anyway. No one is forcing you to use Google, and it's not that difficult to limit your exposure to whatever shenanigans they're engaging in to influence you, just like every organization has since the beginning of organizations. In fact, I think it's probably easier now than it has been at many points in history. How easy was it to escape the influence of the Catholic church a few hundred years ago?
It's not bizarre. The "do this or else lose your job (and therefore go into poverty, making yourself and everyone you know miesrable, and possibly die of illness or starvation)" is probably the most common method of forcing people to do things against their will and conscience in the western world.
Yeah, the outcome for quitting or being fired is usually crushing poverty followed by starvation or dying in the gutter from an untreated illness. That’s why everyone still works the same first job that they got in high school.
I want to see employees have more negotiating power, but you’re being ridiculous. Yes, there’s a whole segment of employees who are exploited by their employers because they are financially vulnerable and may not be able to easily get another job. I’ve worked some of those jobs. They’re mostly not the types of jobs where there’s a lot of concern because their boss makes them use Google Apps.
And going down this road, there’s a huge variety of things you can say your boss “forces” you to do, where it becomes meaningless.
My boss “forces” me to use this brand of office furniture. My boss “forces” me to be here during business hours. My boss “forces” me to do work, for crying out loud! The inhumanity!
You seem to think that if anyone has any ability to cause you inconvenience or even harm if you don’t do their bidding, they’re forced you.
Second, even if this was the goal of a business, it then leaves it up to businesses(boards?, CEOs?) to define things like "ethically", "important benefits", "diversity" etc. These aren't things you could get all people to agree on in the first place- hence the whole democracy thing we do. A lot easier to make these statements then turn them into policies.
Let businesses do what they do best - give them a set of constraints (laws) and let them maximize value. If they do "good" things as well, great, if not, fine. If we don't like the outcomes (environmental damage, inequality) change the rules to change the value equation.