Comment by parasubvert
2 hours ago
This is false. People can have principles, profit motive is not something a corporation has, it's something people have. Corporations do things all the time that are based on everything from principles, to the personal whim of executives, to exercise in ego, to community benefiting actions, or to screw customers for extra profit. It is entirely dependent on the specific people in management roles.
Corporations need profit to survive because the cost of tomorrow is a surplus of today.
A corporation is a bunch of people cooperating to achieve a common goal.
There is a very important factor that heavily influences (perhaps even controls?) how people act to achieve that goal, and sometimes even twists or adds goals.
Is that corporation publicly quoted in the stock market or is it private?
Look at how steam behaves, it's private and more ideological VS how many other publicly quoted companies, whose CEO often sacrifices his own corporation's long term survival for the benefit of short-term profiteering and some hedge fund manager's bonus.
Both need profit to survive, but the publicly quoted company is much more extreme.
When people say corporations only look to profit, what they really mean is that publicly quoted corporations will do everything possible to maximise short term profit at any cost. Is there a CEO caring for long term? Either he will be convinced to change or kicked out. It's almost impossible for someone to resist these influences in publicly quoted companies. It's just how Wall Street works and if that doesn't change neither will corporations.
The people running the world of finance and their culture are what causes enshittification and pushing a zero-sum game to extremes.