It just doesn't seem to harm the corporation enough. The requests for subsidies, the limitations of available support that put the public at risk should be negatively impacting leadership of these organizations drastically.
The public has a lot more influence with policy than they do with internal corporate affairs. I'd much rather fight a bad law than an evil but legally operating company.
That’s an interesting perspective. What’s problematic is the level of corporate lobbying which can interfere with peoples’ (not shareholders, but those who work there) interest. They cannot afford lobbyists. Not without a union.
It's a great example of how companies with money can lobby to get things that don't matter changed, while ordinary citizens can't get the government to fix broken regulations that are having an actual impact on our lives.
I disagree. While there is no guarantee large scale change will be fully driven by corporate self regulation, I'd argue that corporate self regulation, and initiatives like this, have the potential to be substantially more impactful than waiting on help from dysfunctional big government.
yes we need political levers to move, but I'm not holding my breath, and I welcome any and all corporate efforts.
Individuals don’t really have lobbying power. It’d be great if we could solve problems like this comprehensively with legislation, but in the meantime shaming a company into doing the right thing is perhaps all that a small but vocal group of people really can do right now.
Perfect is the enemy of the good, especially in this case.
We don't live in the world of the 1970s anymore, anything that might slow down or impede corporate profits can be rejected out of hand as feasible solution. It's just not even worth the time to talk about it.
At least until we have a new constitutional amendment getting money out of politics.
Yeah, financial and social pressure is basically the only weapons we have against corporations when regulations don't exist. And honestly, financial pressure doesn't work at this scale or in this case.
I know that is a risk but it is only made worse by talking about the useless stuff and not talking about the real actions that should be directed towards the large corporations.
It is unrealistic to expect corporations, which exist solely via regulations of various governments, to act as if they are immune from government regulatory control. In fact, a lot of negative press for FAANG (add extra letters as needed) specifically makes the point that they are acting as if they are bigger than any government.
In that mindset, the answer is absolutely to combat and to attempt to change broken laws first.
Also, it isn't just "think of the children". For instance, there have been some _terrible_ proposals under the banner of Right to Repair. People tend to not want to invest the time in understanding the ramifications of the actual proposals, and instead vote for or against the concept. One of the reasons ballot measures are both empowering and terrifying.
Good regulations take time and care - and generally, less is more.
I suppose you're right that companies should weigh their efforts in favor of complying with laws that bureaucrats are personally invested in. That said, I see this as a rather sad state of affairs.
I might be wrong but I don't think that the problem is with those companies trying to help themselves. Like many, I think that politicians should not be allowed to accept bribes from companies and that it might just solve problems like this one.
This is an absurd position to take with regards to new legislation that will in almost no way benefit corporations. Sure, it might be watered down and not as effective as it could have been – as alleged in the article. But it's still legislation that corporations would much rather not have and be able to do what they want.
Ah yes, the amazing hn cynicism - it's not that the problem is really hard, and there is a really complex system here with all sorts of incentives, variables, and issues on all sides.
Instead, everything is easy, and the reason the "right" thing (as defined by the poster) doesn't happen can be reduced to some single cartoon-villain level bullet point like "not in business interest".
Small problem: There are plenty of folks, foundations, companies who are not resource limited in attacking something like this, yet it still doesn't happen.
So maybe it's not as simple as you think?
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