zlacker

>>JimDab+(OP)
I don’t quite buy your Cyberpunk utopia where the Megacorp finally rids us of those pesky ethics qualms (or ”shackles“, as you phrased it.) Microsoft can now proceed without the guidance of a council that actually has humanities interests in mind, not only those of Microsoft shareholders. I don’t know whether all that caution will turn out to have been necessary, but I guess we’re just gleefully heading into whatever lies ahead without any concern whatsoever, and learn it the hard way.

It’s a bit tragic that Ilya and company achieved the exact opposite of what they intended apparently, by driving those they attempted to slow down into the arms of people with more money and less morals. Well.

>>9dev+w9
You might notice that Microsoft shareholders are also part of humanity and destroying humanity would be highly detrimental to Microsoft's profits, so maybe their interests are not as misaligned as you think.

I am always bemused by how people assume any corporate interest is automatically a cartoon supervillain who wants to destroy the entire world just because.

>>imgabe+fb
Shareholders tend to be institutions whose charter is to maximize profit from the shares. An economic system that doesn't factor in human welfare is worth a thousand villains.

>>jampek+hd
As opposed to what? (National) Socialism was for the benefit of the working people on paper, but in practice that meant imprisoning, murdering and impoverishing anybody thought to be working against the people's welfare. Since this included most productive members of society it made everyone poorer anyway.

Human welfare is the domain of politics, not the economic system. The forces that are supposed to inject human welfare into economic decisions are the state through regulation, employees through negotiation and unions and civil society through the press.

>>thworp+aw
In this case as opposed to e.g. a non-profit?

What you describe is indeed the liberal (as in liberalism) ideal of how societies should be structured. But what is supposed to happen is necessarily not what actually happens.

The state should be controlled by the population through democracy, but few would claim with a straight face that the economic power doesn't influence the state.