Answer :
These are opinion based and one could argue either side. There is no right answer. So below is my personal opinion only.
While I dislike it intensely, I agree with him. This is the nature of capitalism. (If it is a business in non-capitalism, this does not apply.) A business has one sole objective - profit. Anything it does (positive or negative) directly relates to that end goal of profit. Sometimes that requires investments, which short term causes them to lose money, but the goal is always to end with a profit.
A business has no ethics beyond what its customers force on them, and what laws force on them. This is why we see extreme lobbying in the government to decrease regulations constantly (despite history showing stronger taxes and regulations are better for the economy). This is why you see throughout the news segments of child labor overseas.
A business is not a person. A business is an entity. It has no more morals than we would expect of a rat.
Now, a business is run by people of course. And generally people do have morals and try to act in faith of those morals, but that's not something that results in moral behavior of the entire business. Each person has different morals. (We see these in a long list of social issues - abortion, prison reform, wall street reform, climate change, etc. There are always people on opposite sides of the issue.)
A business is run by a chain of command, so the only morals that really matter at the end are the morals of the Big Guy In Charge. But that's actually only true in a private business!
A public business is run by a collective of people called shareholders. These people make decisions of where the business goes. Why do they invest in these businesses? To earn money. If the business doesn't earn money for them, then they will take their investments elsewhere.
Therefore the business relies on these investors. It is dependent on them, and at all costs must keep them happy. But because it's run by a collective of people, we have the issue of conflicting morals. What unites all of them? Profit. They might disagree on whether they should invest in solar energy for the environment, but they always agree they want to make money.
So therefore, we simply see a business identical to any basic trained animal. A dog can be trained to attack, and does so because it's required to by its owner. It doesn't care if the owner tells it to attack a criminal or a child. The moral decision lies on the owner, but typically there is no actual single owner that can be held responsible, and all the group expects is for the dog to attack when told.
While I dislike it intensely, I agree with him. This is the nature of capitalism. (If it is a business in non-capitalism, this does not apply.) A business has one sole objective - profit. Anything it does (positive or negative) directly relates to that end goal of profit. Sometimes that requires investments, which short term causes them to lose money, but the goal is always to end with a profit.
A business has no ethics beyond what its customers force on them, and what laws force on them. This is why we see extreme lobbying in the government to decrease regulations constantly (despite history showing stronger taxes and regulations are better for the economy). This is why you see throughout the news segments of child labor overseas.
A business is not a person. A business is an entity. It has no more morals than we would expect of a rat.
Now, a business is run by people of course. And generally people do have morals and try to act in faith of those morals, but that's not something that results in moral behavior of the entire business. Each person has different morals. (We see these in a long list of social issues - abortion, prison reform, wall street reform, climate change, etc. There are always people on opposite sides of the issue.)
A business is run by a chain of command, so the only morals that really matter at the end are the morals of the Big Guy In Charge. But that's actually only true in a private business!
A public business is run by a collective of people called shareholders. These people make decisions of where the business goes. Why do they invest in these businesses? To earn money. If the business doesn't earn money for them, then they will take their investments elsewhere.
Therefore the business relies on these investors. It is dependent on them, and at all costs must keep them happy. But because it's run by a collective of people, we have the issue of conflicting morals. What unites all of them? Profit. They might disagree on whether they should invest in solar energy for the environment, but they always agree they want to make money.
So therefore, we simply see a business identical to any basic trained animal. A dog can be trained to attack, and does so because it's required to by its owner. It doesn't care if the owner tells it to attack a criminal or a child. The moral decision lies on the owner, but typically there is no actual single owner that can be held responsible, and all the group expects is for the dog to attack when told.
