CliffEdge wrote:AndyPandy wrote:
I think that's a bit of a sweeping statement. The backbone of the UK economy is privately-owned small Businesses. I own (or co-own) 4 of them and defy you to class them as amoral. Mentoring, 2x First Aid Training and 1x Security (Access Control). All UK based, no offshore shenanigans and all taxes paid on time.
Go on to Etsy, or around your local Market. Full of crafters, food producers etc.
Perhaps you can clarify?
There are many honourable exceptions and yours clearly are very honourable and admirable enterprises for which you should be praised. My point (not very well expressed perhaps - I confess that in my shorthand I often depend on later posters to expand on the details spotlighted in my posts, as you have done and I thank you for that) is that capitalism is about making a profit and that must be its main objective. Look at its history, Victorian times, mill workers, child lace makers etc.
And it is the business of the lawmakers to ensure that capitalism behaves morally.
Unfortunately (as with Brexit) the lawmakers, i.e. the government, often have their own interests at heart and it has required and does require civil disobedience to make actual improvements to the lot of the workers and other weak groups of citizens.
Do you want some examples of present day transgressors? There are many but a few - internet service providers (Virgin e.g.), the water companies, supermarkets, Facebook, Amazon... In whose interest do you believe they act?
I don't dispute that some Businesses have amoral moments such as the examples that you provide, but when 99.9% of Businesses employ between 0 and 49 staff, and they are probably genuinely trying to build up an ethical and moral business your sweeping generalisation is simply not true.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... populationDo you want some examples of present day transgressors? There are many but a few - internet service providers (Virgin e.g.), the water companies, supermarkets, Facebook, Amazon... In whose interest do you believe they act?
In their shareholder(s) interest, that's what their constitution says they have to do. That doesn't make them amoral. They can still achieve that and be a moral Business. "Amoral", an indifference to something moral is different to "immoral". Perhaps you mean Immoral? In any case, selective sampling of about a dozen UK based Business that have acted amorally at some point vs 6 Million does not equate to "Businesses are generally amoral".
CliffEdge wrote:If AI brings the huge changes that are predicted, who do you think will benefit?
Probably all of us, in ways we can't predict. Just like automation and the Industrial Revolution, self-serve fuel pumps and supermarkets did. New jobs were created to replace the manual labour, that would have otherwise made costs prohibitive.
CliffEdge wrote:And it is the business of the lawmakers to ensure that capitalism behaves morally.
Is it? I don't think so. Lawmakes have, for example, always allowed weapons to be made - from bows & arrows to nuclear weapons. If it was their Business to ensure Capitalism is Moral, weapon manufacture would have been banned centuries ago, surely?
Also, why bring Brexit into it? Is that a variant of Godwin's Law?