[ExI] Private and government R&D

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/7/22 Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>:

>> Suppose you are a mining company with a turnover of tens of billions
>> of dollars a year. A village is situated on top of a resource you want
>> and the villagers refuse to move. You figure it will cost you $5
>> billion in bad publicity if you forcibly relocate the village but gain
>> you $10 billion in extra profits (you could also just kill the
>> villagers and save on relocation costs, but that would cost you $15
>> billion in bad publicity, defeating the purpose of the exercise).
>> What's to stop you forcibly relocating the village? Why would you give
>> consideration to anything like a principle of non-violence or
>> non-coercion if you can see it would adversely affect the bottom line?
>>
> ### You seem to be you asking me what a psychopath would do in this
> situation. This is not an enlightening question.
>
> It is much more fruitful to ask e.g.:
>
> How many of the richest capitalists are psychopaths? How many of
> top-level politicians are psychopaths? Are people who ascend by
> serving customers more or less likely to be psychopaths, compared to
> people who ascend by force, propaganda, lies, and extortion?
>
> Is a society built on the principle of non-violence less or more
> likely to promote a psychopath into a position of power, compared to a
> society that enthusiastically embraces violence?
>
> Is initiation of violence good? Is it possible to stabilize a
> non-violent society, assuming some fraction of citizens follow my
> suggestion to truly forswear the initiation of violence?
>
> Try to answer those questions for yourself.

If the term "psychopath" can be applied to corporate entities then
that is what they are, and this is the problem. The managers,
employees and shareholders might go home at night and behave nicely
towards their family and neighbours out of genuine human feeling, but
that has no part to play in how business is done. If nasty company A
is more profitable than nice company B, then company B will ultimately
fail or be taken over. The only calculation to be made is what
negative impact, if any, nastiness will have on the bottom line.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou