Interesting phrasing there.

Post #28,697 by Brandioch 2/16/02 9:19:15 PM Reply	Interesting phrasing there. I'm pretty sure that I do not work for evil. I'm pretty that the company I work for does not work for evil. They probably cut as close to the law as possible, that being their function, but they are still a responsible social entity. A responsible social entity that cuts as close the the >LAW< as possible. Quick question. Pure opinion. If the laws was changed to be more lax, do you think they'd still cut as close to it as possible? -OR- Do you think they'd hold their current behaviour (being the responsible social entity that they are).
Post #28,703 by nking 2/16/02 10:40:49 PM Reply	Hmmmm interesting! They cut it as close to the law as they can without breaking it. Sounds like they use loopholes to me. Like loopholes to get out of paying taxes, or loopholes to get out of having discrimination and harassment lawsuits filed against them by doing things to change the facts? Since being a jerk is not against the law, management can do these things by being a jerk to their employees. This, in itself, makes the company management out to be a bunch of high school bullies that never grew up. In my mind that makes them evil, EVIL, I tells ya! "Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
Post #28,882 by rsf 2/19/02 12:17:46 AM Reply	Hmmm When the speed limit was 55, I drove 55. When it was raised to 65, I started driving at 65. Are you saying I should be driving around at 55 when everyone else is going 10mph faster? Ray
Post #28,885 by Ashton 2/19/02 12:47:53 AM Reply	We seem to have come full circle - back to the daleross(?) thread at IWE - "if it's legal - it's ethical". Or: how is an arbitrary speed law (most often intended to raise revenue, under the rubric of 'safety') - anything like a decision about - "what constitutes ethical behavior" ? If.. one is Good at 55, but becomes Evil at 56 mph (a sop to those who like precision, even where it is inane) - do you see also some digital ethical / not-ethical decision, just as simplistic? And does that discrimination come from some statute of this or last year - or from within? (Surely you never meant to imply, "if everybody does it - so can I". Surely.) A.
Post #28,891 by hnick 2/19/02 7:57:58 AM Reply	Not as stoichastic as you suggest... Speed limits are a fairly simplistic law with absolute boundaries. 55 mph is fairly easy to distinguish. Good and evil do not really apply to incremental changes in speed either. Neither do ethics. Tax laws are ostensibly promulgated by our representatives and are screwy enough to confuse some tax lawyers. Now, this discussion can go at least one of two ways: either we are arguing that the company was unethical in getting unfair tax laws past, or they have an ethics problem for using the tax laws as written to minimize their tax bill. Since there has been no suggestion of impropriety,("if it's legal - it's ethical"), I assume we are discussing the latter. I suggest that they would be behaving against stockholders interests if they deliberately paid more taxes than necessary. I don\ufffdt know that it would be unethical, but a publicly held company is supposed to have a responsibility the stockholders. In this instance, I believe that behaving legally is sufficient. The problem I see with this model is that too many CEO\ufffds have evidently seen \ufffdHighlander\ufffd way to many times and have adopted the \ufffdIn the end there can be only one\ufffd mentality. To maintain constant geometric growth, which is what Wall Street seems to expect, companies seem willing to crush all competition to pick up whatever trace amounts of profits the might have taken away. This behavior, which may be legal and/or ethical, appears to be ugly in the extreme to me. So what\ufffds the solution? Go head to head with Wall Street? And face all the people who lose money though restraining the trade of the Big Guys? That\ufffdll go over big, especially since our representatives in government will lose a lot more than most of their constituents (private people, not the businesses.) Maybe regulate monopolistic corporate behavior? Sure, we\ufffdll start with Microsoft. We\ufffdve already got a conviction\ufffd They are going to skate eventually. So maybe we\ufffdll get the next one\ufffd Sorry Ashton, I have no easy solutions to propose. It would be nice if everyone would just live nicely together, but I remain less than optimistic. Regards, Hugh
Post #28,978 by Brandioch 2/19/02 5:42:58 PM Reply	Allow me to clarify. The original post was about a company with ethical standards. That cut as close as the law allowed. I asked what said company would do if the law was changed to be more lax. Allow me to phrase that in speed limits. You have an ethical standard regarding speed (assume that it is because you believe that more people die when the the limit is 65 as opposed to 55). When the limit is 55, you drive 55. When the limit is 65, the law is more lax than your ethical standard so you drive 55. You adhere to your ethical standard. If you drive 65 when the law is 65, and 75 when the law is 75, and so on........ What is your ethical standard? Do you have one? Which brings us back to Ashton's recital of Dale's "legal == ethical".

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