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Is a company not entitled to the sweat of its brow? (Business ethics)
JamesKeenan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
What is "ethical"?
What is acceptable for a business to do in its own interests?
These are questions which must be answered.
[strike]Answer[/strike] Discuss them!
What is acceptable for a business to do in its own interests?
These are questions which must be answered.
[strike]Answer[/strike] Discuss them!
JamesKeenan on
0
Posts
Let's say we're releasing a new product or service that thus far doesn't exist (like a pill that makes orgasms last an hour). There's no relative standard against which to price it. If the business charges a billion a pill, is that price gouging?
Or does price gouging only have connotations of essential stuff like food and fuel and all?
The key word in that previous paragraph was "legal". I conveniently bolded it. It is the government's responsibility to put laws in place to protect consumers and the environment, to enforce those laws, and to setup watchdog agencies to insure that companies follow those laws. Right-wing "free hand of market" government that forfeit this responsibility inevitably lead to consumers and the environment getting raped.
If consumers pay nothing, companies make no profits (unless they are subsidized by the government), and thus cannot keep up employing people and producing goods or services. Therefore, the companies go bankrupt, people lose their jobs, and there are no more goods or services to be acquired. Thus, people get nothing. Clearly, not an optimal situation.
In the exception case where companies get all their income from the government, they can give away their products for free and still make a profit. But the government needs money, which it can get from taxes (in which case the people are paying, albeit indirectly) or from massive borrowing of money from other nations, which leads to another host of problems.
And I believe price gouging only applies to necessities. As far as I know, the definition is raising prices for goods that people absolutely need, and therefore forcing people to pay that inflated price. Your orgasm pill may be overpriced, but it's not gouging because no one absolutely needs to buy it.
And that is wrong, how?
Why, in your opinion, is a company morally obligated to provide their art or entertainment to a larger audience than a smaller audience from which they can profit more?
Why, also, do you ignore an artist's or company's right to profit from his work? Why does the "audience" have greater claim to the created work than the creator?
Do you believe that the creator or owner of something does not have a right to his own creation or property? What if I made a video game and wanted no one to have it? What if I merely wanted to use it myself? Or what if I wanted to give it to ten people for free and then no one else? These actions are immoral, in your eyes?
These are not rhetorical questions - I would love for you to articulate your reasoning. My own position should be obvious from how I phrased these questions.
I don't necessarily think this is true. I cannot quote psychology here, but if everything was free I would be completely lost. That things have a cost and value is what makes me (a) desire certain things and (b) limits me to certain choices. The fact that my choices ARE limited allows me to better appreciate the things I do have.
I understand your point, but in a big-picture sense I have to disagree.
I think that's a fair appraisal. Even so, though, I do think that if you say "this phone costs X, do you want to pay less than X, X, or more than X?" you'll resoundingly get the first answer.
Yes, of course. But human beings often need to be saved from themselves and what one might desire in one-off situations is not the same as when you aggregate. If I asked you: "Would you like a society where every thing is absolutely, 100% free?" I think most people would say "no." But if you ask them about individual products at particular times, then they would absolutely accept any given item either free or for a lower price.
And if I only sell one, so be it. :x
Also, as always happens after major financial events (S&L crisis and Enron coming immediately to mind, and I'm sure I'm missing some other obvious examples), we're likely to see another round of bigwigs making a lot of noise about whistle blowers and accounting regulations. That this continues to come up over and over indicates that either we don't understand the problem, or we're deliberately avoiding the appropriate solution.
Increasing the audience would increase the number of people who would benefit from such an item or work. It would increase net happiness (and with art, often enlightenment as well) in a way that merely releasing it to a minute audience would not.
I do not in any way challenge the authors or businessman’s right to profit from such an endeavour. The original claim was that it was impossible to make too much profit, it is this claim that I disagree with. If books suddenly became hundreds of pounds apiece, this would drastically limit the number your average person could read and have all the obvious negative effects. Having a single work astronomically priced would clearly not have the same outcome, but it would in some small way unnecessarily limit the insight it would grant people in the name of a few pounds. Capitalisms is after all, only there to act as a means to an end as it is proven the best possible system. That doesn’t mean those who make extortionate profits are not damaging to society, if I make hundreds of millions I am obligated to reimburse it in society, either through expanding my business or through charity. Having a few people have dozens of massive mansions, whilst the rest live the people live the life of the working class is clearly an in ideal situation.
If you do not want to give away your work to more than a set number of people, I would question why you would not want such to occur, but would not unreasonably dismiss your want. Maybe it is deeply personal or contains things you do not want disseminated to the general populace. If it’s just ‘because’, then yeah that’s a dick move (this is of course taking into account a specific opposition, not merely because you have not put in the effort as you believe others would not enjoy it). I mean I wouldn’t consider a case like that notable wrong, just a tiny faux par.
Honestly I'm not even sure how to articulate what I don't understand about your argument, so rather than be snarky I'll just ask: why is an artist/producer indebted to mankind?
I'm saying that within reason you shouldn't make it unavailable to the masses via extortionate pricing. If you're selling a book and you realise you can make more money by limiting your audience to two people who'll pay five hundred thousand each, then people can complain that you're pricing your product too highly, and making too much profit. I mean if I produce a personal laptop that is faster than a top of the range pc, and can be produced for mere pittance, would you think it unreasonable of me to charge the same cost as a top of the line pc and build myself a to size replica of Buckingham Palace, rather than cut my profits slightly, and make it available to the average user?
I'm not sure why it's wrong, no. It seems you view is that it is wrong, I gather that, I just don't see why.
I mean, if it was like- hey, I own the only water plant in town, and I charge 500,000 a gallon of water, which one guy can afford. The others can't afford that and they all die of dehydration. I could see that as dickish.
But writing a book and not making it cheap? Why is that a dick move?
In your opinion, are "dick moves" necessarily unethical?
In your opinion, is selfishness inherently unethical?
Because I would not agree that selfishness is fundamentally unethical. Or even what we've come to understand as "dickishness." I think those are two different scales. I would certainly agree, for instance, that it would be "dickish" for Sony and Microsoft to start charging 90 USD per video game, but I would not call it immoral or unethical.
At what point do people finally say. "OK, I'm rich enough, enough is enough."
Do we really need any more mansions? do we need any more golden parachutes? Wealth and luxury is one thing, but its really getting obscene how rich some of these people are. I know what you're thinking, who am I to say when someone becomes "rich enough" You're right. I shouldn't judge. But still, the rich/poor gap is getting pretty wide.
At some point, people need to give back, and I'm not just talking about donating to charity. I'm talking about really passing savings onto the consumer. I'm talking about people giving their TIME, not just their money. I don't really have the answer of how it should work, I doubt many people do. I just think we need to raise the lowest common denominator, not lift up those select few even higher
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
That seems plenty about ethics and business to me.
discuss?
Capital gains tax is really low. Which means the rich can stay rich, because the majority of their money will be made this way.
This is what I was led to believe. Is it wrong? (I mean is it factually wrong)
All investments start out as income, which is, of course, taxed. Even if you inherit money from a relative, it has been taxed previously (this is also the argument against estate taxes). If your income were not taxed, you could gain a larger return by investing more, so your investment income has already been reduced by means of previous taxation. Thus, capital gains taxes are a double taxation.
Now, these same things could be said of sales taxes, yet they are not railed against by the same political crowd for obvious reasons. And eliminating capital gains and inheritance taxes would just lead to a society of trust fund children, which is not necessarily desirable for society as a whole.
As for selfishness, it's not inherently unethical, rather many of the things that it leads to are. If for example there’s a chance of you or someone else getting something, and you opt for you to receive it, all other things being equal it’s a selfish but entirely moral action. However, if your selfishness leads to you living a life of luxury whilst your peers live in squalor to support your lifestyle then yes, it’s wrong. Then again arguably selfishness drives our entire society leading to the quality of life we have now. So really selfishness is amoral, it’s merely the driving force that leads to acts that can be either moral or immoral, which I guess means no to your question. Though I do think it has a tendency to lead to the latter rather than the former.
This assumes a lack of barriers to competition, such as a monopoly of the supply of materials or even copywrite. If a company is in a postion were it knows it will not and cannot have an competition, would it or would it not be ethical for them to exploit that position to charge significantly higher prices than normally possible?
EDIT: On the topic of copyrights, yes indeed there will be unique products (mostly artistic) that will never be exactly replaced. But why would the artist ever agree to a deal where the company forbids him to show his work to the public? But if the artist agrees to that, and the company, and they find a rich client willing to pay for that unique product, well.... tough luck for you. At that point, blocking the deal would be bordering on infringing on civil rights.
I.P. IS monopoly at its very core. And the artist doesn't often agreee. The artist is often contracted by a large conglomerate to make a work and usually loses any and all control over the use and distribution of his or her work. The point of the matter is that I.P. is a case where a few large multi-national conglomerates/trade groups can collude control over markets my hoarding unique properties and suing similar properties into oblivion as derrivaties.
As the saying goes (paraphraised) "If the mousetrap were invented today, not only would the design be patented, but so to would the idea of catching mice. The world would have to have waited another twenty years to have invented a better way." I.P. as it is now enables companies to corner markets on luxury goods by copyrighting things and then suing anything vaguely similar into oblivion so it can't compete. "Whats that, you made a sci-fi show in space too? How dare you!!! *Sue*"
The fundamental problem with that though is that in "theory" it's supposed to, but in practice it doesn't. Idealogically the system of capitalism is meant to tap into mankind's most powerfull impulse, greed. It's supposed to take that and FORCE it to work for society. However in practice that isn't always the case. This is why business can be unethical. The system isn't perfect, so there will always be ways to exploit it. So there should always be those ready to correct those loopholes as they occur, hence the need for regulation.
Yeah, but there's a very large middle ground between "exploitative" and "altruistic."
A business is not morally obligated to provide anything for society, much less in the entertainment industry, however it is obligated not to harm society, or humanity, or the planet.
I'm still waiting for a sufficient explanation from someone, anyone, as to why it is abhorrent for a company to price their products however they please as long as it is not disruptive to society.
It isnt abhorrent, assuming we're talking about companies that are just producing Unneccesary Item X. It becomes abhorrent when we start talking about staple goods... bread, milk, water, electricity. Of course, companies supplying even these staple items are allowed to turn a profit, but because of the nature of what they deal in we need regulations in place that limit just how much profit can actually be turned. Some of these industries are more self governing through competition than others, but others (water, power) are often something you cant just switch at will, depending on where you live.
I feel that ethics are being too narrowly viewed based on a product/service being sold for too high a price, in this thread. Heres another unethical situation:
Suppose Company A has a number of suppliers. Some of these suppliers are large. Some of them are small, like, say, a delivery truck driver contracting to Company A. Lets say that Company A decides that rather than pay the delivery truck company (a one man company) on time, they are going to pay all his invoices on 45 day terms instead of the 14 day terms his invoices stipulate. This will put cashflow concerns on the delivery truck company. Company A knows they can do this, because they are large. Delivery truck companies are common and easily replaceable. It would cost the delivery truck company time and money to pursue legal action in regards to the late payment, and at the end of it their contract would certainly be terminated anyway. They must either put up with it, or stop contracting and look for replacement work... perhaps to another large company where perhaps the same problem exists. This is a real problem, and one which faces many small businesses.
This seems highly unethical, right? What if Company A is in financial difficulty? What if they have to choose who to pay currently, and they choose not to pay delivery truck driver because the ramifications to Company A are minimal? If they choose not to pay Huge Supplier B, then HSB will simply stop supply and Company A might be screwed, with nothing to sell. Where does the line between what is ethical and what is necessary lie?