Comment by Animats

It's the correct choice according to the fundamental principles of capitalism, as set down by Milton Friedman.[1] and Lewis Powell.[2] Friedman set down the theory:

In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit or they need not participate. There are no “social” values, no “social” responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form. ...

(But) the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book “Capitalism and Freedom,” I have called it a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and have said that in such a society, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Then Powell (the Powell who became a Supreme Court Justice) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce set out to change the rules of the game. The 1971 "Powell memo" was written when the values of the 1960s had permeated society. The objective of the memo was to turn that around. It's a battle plan to use corporate power to change government. When it was written, few companies had lobbyists. Now, corporate lobbying is huge, and effective.

The extent to which this well-funded project worked doesn't have to be described today. What's worth realizing is that it wasn't always that way.

The U.S. Government of the Lyndon Johnson era ("Great Society", "War on Poverty") was organized to deal with something like the impact of AI on employment. The current government is not. It is permeated with people who think it the government shouldn't do anything about it.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr...

[2] https://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/