• DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    unless of course you think the German army of 1933-1945 isn’t evil

    You do realize you are the one implying the Nazi soldiers aren’t evil, because the individual soldiers were threatened into serving:

    if you don’t dump this toxic sludge in the middle of this town, your children will starve (yes, this is a thing that really happened), material circumstances exist,

    So are people who are threatened into evil evil themselves? Make up your mind.

    Either way, it is not relevant for my argument.

    The way a group of individuals pursuing their goals interact with each other is a law of nature just as much as radiation. We just call a specific type of such group a corporation, just like we call a specific arrangement of fissile material a nuclear fuel rod.

    Sure, you can “make” a corporation not be greedy by for example turning it into a non-profit. But you can’t do it without making unintentional undesirable changes, namely stopping them from being efficient in creating value. Just like you can “make” a nuclear fuel rod less radioactive, but not without damaging its usefulness as fuel. Because you can’t change the laws of how individual actions in a group create a complex system.

    • orrk@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 months ago

      You do realize you are the one implying the Nazi soldiers aren’t evil, because the individual soldiers were threatened into serving

      that only works if you have some hard-line stance against seeing the world as anything but purely individualistic, in fact no I propose the opposite, even those who did not themselves commit the gassings at Auschwitz were guilty of these killings, because, turns out after years and years of research, No man is an island unto himself.

      The way a group of individuals pursuing their goals interact with each other is a law of nature just as much as radiation

      but it isn’t, to assume as such is to assert your ignorance on such a profound scale, not just in the legal sense but also in the Historical and Societal. How we organize, and interact as a society is completely and totally alien to those who lived but three generations before us, to claim it is a natural constant on the level of radioactive decay or exothermic reactions is beyond delusional.

      Fundamentally, you can’t comprehend why a corporation is a moral entity because you don’t understand the difference between a concept and a rock.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        How we organize, and interact as a society is completely and totally alien to those who lived but three generations before us, to claim it is a natural constant on the level of radioactive decay or exothermic reactions is beyond delusional.

        It is your reading comprehension that is woefully lacking I am afraid. Repeatedly refusing to understand what I am saying in favor of your own interpretation. Let me try one last time to explain.

        Imagine you have two particles interacting with each other through a collision. This is governed by Newtons laws. Add one more particle and it is the same. However, add 10^24 more particles and we are no longer talking about Newtons laws, but about laws of thermodynamics. In a sense, the laws of thermodynamics are not real, the particles are still governed by Newtons laws. They are just a result of statistical approximations, a human construct if you will. But you cannot change these laws, because they are the results of said Newtons laws.

        In the same way, it is possible to change a Persons behavior, by modifying the environment the live in. This can include laws, law enforcement, taxes and many other things.

        However, the behavior of a corporation is a statistical result of Persons comprising it. You can not change it in any other way than to change behavior of People. The (statistical) laws of how behavior of many individuals combine into a complex system, such as a corporation is what is unchangeable. These are the laws of nature.

        Let us take your example of an army. What is an army? In a simplified view, it is an organization where individuals are armed, trained, organized into units with hierarchical structure in order to execute combat and other operations as ordered by national leadership. As a concept, the US army and the German army of said era have no meaningful difference in the form of organization they are.

        The two meaningful differences are:

        1. The orders the armies received
        2. The individuals they were comprised of. Of course, some individuals such as high ranking officers have greater impact on the organization than foot soldiers, but they all do have impact. Their willingness to follow orders is what comprises the morality of the army.

        So you can’t turn the evil army of Germany into the righteous army of the Allies by changing what an army is. You have to either replace the orders it follows or the individuals that comprise it or both.

        You can also stop the German army from being evil by having it not arm its members with weapons and instead train with musical instruments, but what you have then is not an army, but a marching band.

        Equally, a corporations behavior is partly dictated by the laws it operates under and whether and how the People comprising it follow said laws.