@peripatetic.bsky.social: My *sense* is that in the 50s and 60s, the idea of "civic duty" and that shareholders were not the only stakeholders that CEOs/boards cared about, So they didn't have the same incentives to be unethical. Do I have anything solid to back that up? Of course not.

C-suites have always made bafflingly dumb choices about implementing new tech, but it does feel like executives are making those dumb choices at a much faster, more dangerous rates nowadays

Even worse, C-suites are buying in on the chrome & foam.

Feels like C-suites are speed-running their own tenures at companies more now. More willing to 'burn the ships' for a few good years under them, make good coin, then peace out or bounce to the next thing. Seems to be way less long-term planning/strategy.. which I have a few different thoughts on..

one more thing I’ll say is this also feels tied to the loss of consequences & loss of the importance of ‘reputation’. Politics have devolved so much, & this is now impacting the corporate world. Anyone that faked caring about ethics for their reputation feels like that shit doesn’t matter anymore

It's almost like making a shit ton of money & having ethics are at cross purposes. Weird.

lmao yes this too. But there used to be a world where some CEOs cared enough about pretending to care or pretending to be inspiring and ethical, et cetera Also the CEOs 'talk' & this thread might land me on some List of Ire but whatever. If you're a CEO & GAF about others this doesn't apply to you

Maybe I'm cynical but it seems like CEO's have never taken ethics seriously. If a company is big enough to have a CEO, they are doing something unethical, usually screwing their employees.

My *sense* is that in the 50s and 60s, the idea of "civic duty" and that shareholders were not the only stakeholders that CEOs/boards cared about, So they didn't have the same incentives to be unethical. Do I have anything solid to back that up? Of course not.

This *was* true until ~1982 in America. That's when Reagan put Robert Fucking Bork on the bench. Bork made case law that companies were only supposed to care about money, and couldn't get in trouble if they only cared about money.

But I know what you are referring to & your basically right. Laws & regulations constraining corporate conduct started being unwound by Reagan. Tons of stuff that is legal now used to be illegal, like stock buy backs.

Bork wasn't a SCOTUS member.

No, but he was a member of the appellate court.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood you.

I did collapse an entire (long!) career of an evil man into a short statement. So I probably cut far more corners than I should have.

How dare you! (jokes) but for real, we're all just spitballing here, really! I am no expert, I just have strong pattern recognition and have worked closely with some CEOS, been privy to some info from boards, closely observed others tangentially outside of my immediate social sphere et cet et cet

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