Writing 06: Corporate Conscience

If we are to treat corporations as people with respect to rights, we should also treat them like people in respect to responsibilities. These responsibilities extend to moral and ethical considerations that must be respected when dealing with immoral entities or making decisions that can negatively affect the lives of the general populace. No company exists in a vacuum: no matter what they do, their actions in some way have moral consequences. Because of this, corporations cannot simply take a backseat with regards to ethical practices. In fact, I would argue that corporations have a greater obligation than individuals to uphold the moral values of our society due their incredible influence over our livelihood.

Ultimately, the law should be enforcing ethical practices on corporations. While this does limit our economy in some ways, regulation is necessary in order to ensure that the rights of consumers are protected and respected. Corporate competition is not enough to ensure that upholding these rights continue to be a major factor in business decisions. Corporations already enjoy many privileges not afforded to individuals in regard to accountability and culpability. Thus, regulation is needed in order to maintain a balance between corporate growth and consumer protections.

Moreover, being ethical in your business decisions and your dealings is simply good business. Honesty and transparency are highly valued among consumers, and if you neglect these, you are practically begging to be destroyed in the future by a competitor that understands the importance of these values. While these values do incur some overhead on the part of the business, good customer relations should always trump quick, short-term profits. A lot of the greatest business collapses occur when companies decide to put their investors before their consumers and use tactics such as stock buybacks to artificially inflate the value of their business without actually increasing the quality of their profits.

In order for our economy to encourage ethical practices and good consumer relations, there must be healthy competition within all industries. Without this competition, corporations naturally begin to ignore their consumers since the quality of their products and the morality of their practices have no influence over their products. Oftentimes, the most unethical businesses come about due to monopolistic practices. Thus, the law should encourage businesses that grow due to better products and discourage those that try to achieve growth through anti-competitive means such as large buy-outs, artificial deflation of sale prices, etc.

Government should play an active role in keeping businesses in check. The government's most important responsibilities lie in trust-busting and corporate oversight. The government also has a responsibility to enforce open standards regarding utilities so that the controllers of the pipelines can't disadvantage their competitors by restricting access through physical or proprietary means. These open standards are becoming increasingly important as our world becomes more connected through the Internet of Things. Additionally, setting "standards rather than rules" isn't enough. Standards are not legally enforceable and thus would have little effect on corporate behavior. This can be seen now in the lax actions Google and Facebook have taken to ensure that user data is not abused. Despite a large number of lawmakers speaking against these companies, the government is powerless to change their behavior since there are no applicable laws to enforce against them.