Corporations, at their core, are profit-generating engines—nothing more, nothing less. The corporate board’s one legal imperative is to ensure the shareholders see a return on their investment, by any means necessary. Morality? It’s merely a decorative flourish, not the operating principle.
All companies are evil. Google is not any more or less evil than any other company. The difference is they have a significant power base and therefore have a lot to gain or lose in the transition to fascism. They understand that Trump is spiteful and willing to bend and even break the law to punish those who defy him. They also understand he rewards those who bend the knee. Therefore, the most profitable path of action is bending the knee.
This should not surprise anybody. You substitute Google for any large corporation and they would have done the same thing. Don’t believe me? Google around (while you still can freely search for information) for the Coca-Cola saga in Colombia, where union leaders were getting forcibly suicided by narco-paramilitary death squads hired by Coca-Cola.
You know- the commercials that make you feel all warm and fuzzy around Christmas time with the polar bears and Santa Claus? Yeah, they’ll murder you if you threaten their bottom line. It’s just what they do.
There’s a simple math equation:
Let
P = Probability of getting caught,
F = Expected fine or penalty,
R = Potential revenue or profit,
Constants
α = The weight assigned to the probability of getting caught ( P ). If this constant is high, the corporation is more cautious… if it’s low, the corporation is willing to make more risks. In Colombia, this is much lower than in the US.
β = The weight assigned to the probable size of the penalty ( F ). A high β means there’s a serious potential danger. However, if β is low (like when Ford decided the cost of simply paying lawsuits from deaths due to known car malfunctions was probably lower than the price of recalls) then they’ll be more likely to push forward
γ = The weight assigned to the impact on their bottom line ( R ). For example, if Boeing thinks they will lose a lot of money from whistleblowers, they will find a way to suicide them. If the impact is small, then it’s not worth the potential risks.
C = ( αP ⋅ βF ) − γR
Let’s give an imaginary example. Let’s say a corporation is considering dumping toxic waste illegally into a river, potentially giving thousands of people cancer. Let’s say they’re gonna save $10M a year from doing this.
R = 10,000,000
The probability of getting caught is 10%
P = 0.10
The expected fine is $5M
F = 5,00,000
Let’s try out some constants
α = 1.5 ⇒ they’re somewhat cautious about getting caught
β = 1.2 ⇒ they’re moderately concerned about the penalty
γ = 2.0 ⇒ they’re really motivated by profit (maybe their profits went down 10% last year, a big no-no)
Plug in the values
C = (1.5 · 0.10 · 1.2 · 5,000,000) - (2.0 · 10,000,000)
C = (900,000) - (20,000,000)
C = -19,100,000
C is less than 0? Dump that toxic waste, baby. It’s the logical position if you’re trying to maximize profit. Sometimes you will get caught, but imagine you did this in a simulation 1,000 times. Most of the times, you will be more profitable because of it and therefore you dump the waste.
It’s like a poker player. If you get AA, you raise pre-flop. Sometimes you will lose on the flop to some dunce who goes in with 2-7… but in the long term, most of the time, you will win. Therefore it’s the right move.
This is what companies do. People need to realize and internalize this. They are profit generating engines. Nothing more, nothing less. They are not your friends. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care about the future of the world or anything. Literally nothing at all.
They are a math formula and if destroying everything you love happens to be the most profitable move most of the time, they will do it without second guessing. Because they aren’t people. They are a machine.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A haunting reminder that rainbow capitalism is 100% about profit and convenience.
Corporations were never your friend. They were never going to defend you.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Corporations were never your friend. They were never going to defend you.
They were going to defend you for as long as doing so remained profitable.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
I like to say that corporations will never go out of their way to be charitable. There’s always a bottom line, being it PR or direct profit. Even PR and Marketing spend has to eventually lead to increase in profit.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
It’s not even “rainbow capitalism.”
This goes all the way back to women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights era.
They didn’t start accepting women into the workforce and blacks into the workforce because they saw them as valuable humans just for existing.
They realized they were leaving money on the table. If women had money, they could be marketed products, if blacks had money, they could marketed products. That was “opening up new markets.” Hiring them meant they would get paid and have money in their pockets to spend at your business.
Every single group that got attention and understanding was about being able to exploit them for more money. The only color they’ve ever cared about is the green on their money. This is also why it’s been such an uphill battle for anyone disabled, because if you can’t maximize your output by absolutely destroying your body and mind for capital: they don’t want you.
Further, if you get enough money to do some capitalism yourself and create something like “Black Wall Street” they’ll bomb the living fuck out of you to put a stop to it.
RedSnt@feddit.dk 1 day ago
Reading about the Tulsa race massacre is so crazy, like World War 1 planes, some say up to 12, others at least 8 of them doing stuff like: “… turpentine or nitroglycerin bombs being dropped and men shooting from planes”
Kramkar@lemmy.world 1 day ago
POTD
Beetschnapps@lemmy.world 1 day ago
10 out of 10
ISOmorph@feddit.org 1 day ago
That’s why I’m a big fan of voting with my wallet. Switch to tutanota for mails, search with duckduckgo, use f-droid as an app store… No one needs google, it’s just somewhat inconvenient to get used to alternatives
kat@orbi.camp 1 day ago
Plug for kagi.com for those who can afford to pay for searches. Best search engine experience, love the personalized results where you manually raise and lower specific domains.
masterofn001@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Wallets mean nothing to people and corps with more money than the rest of humanity combined.
The people calling the shots need to be… Uh…
You live by the sword you die by the sword.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
As stupid as it is… You have to buy a fucking Google Pixel to really be able to get away from Google because it’s not as simple to get an alternate OS that is de-googled on any other phones.
The Pixels, for example, are the only ones supported by GrapheneOS, widely considered one of the most secure phone operating systems.
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Thanks. See Tuta mention 2 years ago they’re making a drive alternative but… that’s still not a thing. Kinda sad would definitely like that.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Way ahead of you. I already use an alternative paid email service, don’t use Android, and don’t use Google search.
syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Yeah, it’s essentially a weathervane or thermometer. You can indicate the state of a country by it.
At this point the US has joined the ranks of, well, grim theocracies. Not that the people at the top in the US worship anything but Mammon.
Fluffy_Ruffs@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Right. If you react to this news with disappointment, and believe me I’m disappointed, maybe it’s more a wake up call the support was never real to begin with. I feel we’re better off without such hollow gestures. Then again I’m not a part of a marginalized group and maybe it’s not that black and white.