Comment by parasubvert

The profit motive is not the reason for a company's existence, it is an optional personal/human motive.

Companies exist to create customers. Everything else follows that. There is no value, no profit, not growth, no action whether moral or immoral, unless you have a customer.

Market incentives by themselves don't tend management decisions towards immorality, unless you've created immoral (or amoral) customers, or you've accepted capital from immoral (or amoral) investors.

It always comes back to people. If your customers or investors are some level of evil (or some degree of amoral), then you as a corporation probably are going to wind up being some level of evil or amoral.

It's up to management and majority ownership to steer those as appropriate... are you're willing to take money from anyone? There's a useful but dangerous veil of ignorance that raises with scale & ubiquity, such as commodity or public equity/debt markets. The resulting anonymity requires diligence from the company, such as Know Your Customer / KYC , and clear statements of the principles & laws of the corporation in its prospectus to attract the right fit of investor... and a backstop of government regulation to encourage or require these minimum standards of behaviour.