this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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A bit beyond that, though, if pressed, they'll say they NEED to do it to remain competitive. That's their reasoning behind every evil thing they do. On the rare occasion they call for some law to restrict the industry, it's because their company is having trouble competing.
They'll do anything to profit that isn't explicitly against the law in whatever country they operate in. But they will also do things against the law if the penalty isn't high enough to stop them. They will take into account the social penalty, but if the profit is high, and they run a virtual monopoly, then the social costs are almost always outweighed.
They take everything into consideration but have zero empathy or morals, so that never enters the equation. Profit is all that matters.
That might literally be true.
Imagine there are two factories. One spends $100 a week disposing of toxic waste. The other one saves that $100 a week by dumping their toxic waste into the local river. Absent of a robust regulatory state that can prevent and punish that kind of behavior, even if the first factory wants to be responsible environmental stewards, they might literally go bankrupt trying to compete with the evil factory.
You can apply this to anything that can be regulated. Companies might not have a choice between doing the evil thing or not; it might literally be a matter of "Well, everyone is doing it, and if I don't, then I'll be driven out of business anyway."
A functional government gets out in front of this phenomenon, makes doing evil shit illegal, and levies fines and punishments against companies that do evil/illegal shit such that doing the evil shit is no longer profitable.
But instead we've got... [gestures broadly at our current nightmare reality].