Is a Moral Compass a Hindrance Or a Help For Startups?

Nerval's Lobster writes As an emerging company in a hotly contested space, Uber already had a reputation for playing hardball with competitors, even before reports leaked of one of its executives threatening to dig into the private lives of journalists. Faced with a vicious competitive landscape, Uber executives probably feel they have little choice but to plunge into multi-front battle. As the saying goes, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and when you're a startup that thinks it's besieged from all sides by entities that seem determined to shut you down, sometimes your executives feel the need to take any measure in order to keep things going, even if those measures are ethically questionable. As more than one analyst has pointed out, Uber isn't the first company in America to triumph through a combination of grit and ethically questionable tactics; but it's also not the first to implode thanks to the latter. Is a moral compass (or at least the appearance of one) a hindrance or a help for startups?

Comments

Capitalism does not reward morality

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Morality is for the working class. If you want to succeed in a capitalist economy, it's better to be amoral.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[wcrowe]

I think you're equating capitalism with avarice. It is possible to run a business while maintaining a sense of morality. Lots of people do and make a living that way. However, if all you want to do is make money, and continue making more and more of it, for no reason other than to keep making more of it, then yes, morality must, at some point, be tossed out.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[Zephyn]

Early on in the life-cycle of a company, getting a reputation as being too immoral can hinder your ability to attract employees, customers, and investors. You need to make the most of your benefit of the doubt when you're small and no one knows about the people running the place. Once you've become a significant or dominant part of the market you're competing in, the public's perception of your morality doesn't matter as much.

In other words, your true nature as a heartless bastard shouldn't go public before your company does.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[Anonymous Coward]

The profit motive encourages stealing. That's what's going on on Wall Street. Capitalism has been great for a portion of the developed world, and it worked for that portion because they used it as an excuse to steal from everyone else.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[vux984]

. Anything that reduces individual freedoms is less moral than anything that increases individual freedoms.

Your entire argument hinges on that premise being true. Its not true. The rest of your argument falls with it.

Suppose I and my friends have all the money, all the property, and all the food, and you don't have any of it. What exactly are you free to do?

I am not taking away your freedoms. You are absolutely free in every sense of the word. Now how are you going to live without somehow infringing on my and my friends freedom.

You can offer us you labor in exchange for something, and if we feel generous we might take you up on it. Or not. Lets suppose not. Now what do you do, exactly, with all your freedom? How are you planning to pull yourself up from your bootstraps? You can't work the land, because its mine and I don't need you to. You can't forage, again, all the property is owned, and you aren't welcome to poach from it.

How you make it past a week is beyond me. The charity of others to clothe and feed you I guess. So you may live at their whim and sufference, and should they decide you no longer amuse them, I guess you die.

Yes, that sounds like a good system upon which to found civilization.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[AuMatar]

You misunderstand how libertarians use the word free. To them, freedom means being able to do whatever they want whenever they want in any way they want without any form of responsibility to anyone or anything. In other words they mean anarchy, and they're deluded enough to think they're all Ayn Randian supermen who will rise to the top in such an environment. Holding a rational debate or explaining anything to someone like that is a waste of time, it's like trying to convert the pope to Buddhism.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[vux984]

- tell me, how did you arrive to a situation in a free market capitalist economy where you and your friends have 'all the money' and 'all the property' and 'all the food'?

How did I arrive at that state? Its the DEFAULT state.

We are all born naked and with nothing. And everything in the world is owned by others.

For me to make it week into infancy, I'm already imposing upon someone else.

Presumably, you are in favor of passing the burden of clothing and feeding a newborn to its parents. So are you already, now reducing their freedoms to maximize their own profits to support your life??

Ah, but they're your parents... so that's special.. if they didn't want that obligation they shouldn't have had you right? Ok... so lets say your fathers dead before your born and mom dies in childbirth. The hosipital and funeral expenses wipe out what little she had. You certainly don't expect me and my friends to bury her for free do you?

So there you are still naked and penniless.

Your move.

In a situation when a person appears out of nowhere

Its usually out of a womb via one of a couple routes.

It is unacceptable to declare some form of moral authority based on theft and initiation of violent force.

So the parents shouldn't be obligated to take care of the child? Who exactly should be? And how would you structure this so that it wasn't based on "theft and the initiation of violent force"?

Charity run orphanages and such? Because if that's your "solution" then you really are just advocating the "You get to live as long as you amuse me and my friends, until we decide we're bored of you, and stop. Then you die."

And its not just infants that appear "out of nowhere" countless children grow up and move out with minimal or no assets (the clothes on their back). And nobody has to look after them. One mistep and their meager fortunes eliminated. And they too get to live at the whim of me and my friends.

In a free market capitalist system you are born a free person, a family or a charity is taking care of you or you while you are a child

Why should they? What if they decide not to? Nobody can force them, so what happens then?

and eventually you learn from peers and become an apprentice in a business, studying it, learning the skills necessary to provide others within the same market conditions with the output of your own labour.

Nobody is required to take me as an apprentice. Nobody is required to hire me. Your vision is a defective as pure communism and fails for the same basic reasons. In pure communism, it is argued no one is motivated to work or do undesirable jobs so they don't and it collapses. But your capitalism fails just as hard, nobody is required to hire you. Nobody is required to need your labor. Being willing and able to work doesn't mean anyone

You don't 'own everything', you only own what you can earn and with time your earning potential increases.

Consider "me and my friends" to be any population. Collectively we do own everything. It is not a 'bizarre' circumstance, its the way it is for all of us all the time. Most everyone (aside from immigrants bring external wealth) added to the population comes at it with NOTHING and only has what the rest GIVE them. If they don't choose to give them anything, what exactly are they supposed to do?

Furthermore wealth concentrates. In any capitalism a smaller and smaller proportion of a population controls more and more wealth, until eventually someone has it all. The game monopoly is actually a reasonable (simplified) model for why this happens.

Consider the "losers" in monopoly; what could they do differently? Consider why it never reaches a steady state, and a winner is eventually inevitable.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[vux984]

- the care for orphaned children is provided by private charities without any questions.

So "Me and my friends" don't feel charitible enough this year. So they go under funded.

You can't simply wave your hands around and stipulate that from somewhere magical charitible unicorns will show up and provide the needy exactly just enough for what they need. Its ridiculous.

What if the unicorns don't show up? What if they won't give quite enough? What if those who would give don't have quite enough themselves? Any proposal that simply presumes "charity" will be enough is idiotic. Millions starve to death each year in Africa. Others live like Princes. Charity isn't enough. You'll have to do better.

However without government rules on hiring/firing practices there are no issues for people to find apprenticeship positions.

No issues?

Because you never turn anyone down right? You never run into someone you wouldn't hire? If someone shows up willing to work, well you just sign them up and they can start earning so they can eat and pay rent.

I run a business and I have people that start working here for free just to learn the skills.

Oh... so you provide them work, but its up to them to what, exactly? Do they need to get a second job that actually pays actual money if they'd like to eat and not live in a ditch while they learn from you? Because presumably if they show up to your place of work dizzy from lack of nourishment and smelling of ditch living you'd probably ask them to leave.

When I build my systems I create new wealth that never existed before.

Sure. But you required capital to build that system, and that system is only worth anything if someone else wants it.

When somebody takes some mud and turns it into a piece of art or into a brick they create some wealth that didn't exist before.

Ah, well then Africa must be wealthy indeed because they have plenty of mud. Tell me, how much mud art have you purchased from them? And around here? Unless I own property where exactly am I getting the mud from? It doesn't come into existence as an act of will... I'd need to buy it from someone else. This is going to be hard to do as I don't have any money yet. Since I haven't sold any mud bricks yet. Since I don't have any mud. (And again, how big do you think the local market for mud bricks is? After paying for the mud, the capital to turn it into bricks, advertising, and transportation expenses... will I be eating? Or will I be sitting on a stack of mud bricks, tired, hungry, and in debt to someone for a truckload of mud?

When a person writes a book or a new sheet of music he creates wealth that didn't exist before and nobody gave it to them, it didn't exist, it was created out of nothing just because people wanted / needed to create it.

Funny that most writers, painters, and musicians make next to nothing from their art and work other jobs. Seems like the magic of creating wealth by sheer creative will is overrated. I can create all the music I can, but without demand for my vast creative outputs I don't end up any wealthier for it.

You see, one cannot simply "create wealth". One can create, but its not wealth unless there is actually a market for it. And there is not much a person can do in the modern world, starting with nothing, that has any market value. You can't simply start "creating" and then start cashing cheques. Life doesn't actually work that way.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[vux984]

- your suggestion is to steal and to use violence to take from those who have wealth

Look at history.

My observation is that they'll steal and use violence to take from those who have wealth REGARDLESS once things reach the tipping point.

Revolution and war is the end result of your 'utopia'; one huge, destructive, and genuinely violent massive redistribution of wealth. (real violence where people actually die at the hands of others, lose limbs, and bleed to death, not the pseudo "violence" of "taxes" collected by an elected government.)

A person with skills is worth money.

Not every person has marketable skills. You need a solution that actually solves problems. All your doing is asserting that some people will be just fine. That's not good enough. What about the other people?

A person without skills has these options: go make some money and go study somewhere and pay for that privilege or go on welfare apparently or find a position that could be used to start their career.

How are those options? How do they "make money"? If they had skills with value they would already be working. They don't.

How do they eat and shelter while they "go study somewhere"?

or go on welfare apparently

Something that does not exist in your ideal world. So I guess not that.

or find a position that could be used to start their career.

That's merely repeating that should "make money". Good plan. If you don't have money. Just make some. Easy.

That's the beauty of free market capitalism, I had to save the capital from previous production and under-consumption

That's the flaw of free market capitalism. That the only way to move forward is to HAVE capital saved from previous production and under-consumption. But since you start with NOTHING you have no way forward unless you START by having someone give you something. But you refuse to make a guarantee that people will have that absolutely necessary start. (And if they screw up and lose what they start with, they need another start, etc.) Theres no way around that.

houses are built from bricks, maybe you didn't realise it, but mud can be used to make bricks and then those bricks can be used to build houses and to build stoves that then can be used to produce better bricks.It's amazing what a little world education does for a person.

They don't have that education. They aren't clever or educated enough to see their way out of the hole they are in. Perhaps you would be in their situation... perhaps not. But this isn't about you, its about them. They don't have that education, or the cleverness to find a niche. So you and I have two choices:

a) wait for revolution

b) provide them assistance and support; education and training. We can lift them out the hole.

There is plenty that a person can do in the modern world starting from nothing with nothing

Utter bullshit.

a person can work for others when he has nothing of his own,

Nobody would hire a person who has nothing. You wouldn't. Why should anyone else?

that's how we all start in life - with no skills and with no assets (most of us) and it takes time and we acquire skills and assets (most of us).

I may have started with nothing. But I had around 20 years of food and shelter just GIVEN to me. I was provided an education for free. I was GIVEN clothes. I was given the means to transport myself.

I was free to develop skills, because all my needs were covered. I could afford to work and gain experience in jobs that paid too poorly to actually live on because all my base needs were covered. So I used that income to buy a car and go to university. Had I actually had to support myself neither would have been an option.

Eventually I graduated, and had jobs with incomes exceeding the poverty level, and I could move out and start supporting myself, and eventually starting my own business, and living the the capi

Wrong question.

[BarbaraHudson]

Companies don't have "moral compasses" - the people working in them do.

If you have a moral compass that works, are you willing to toss your morals aside, or work for/with people who do not possess the same values?

If the answer is no to the first part, then you don't need to answer the second part.

If the answer is yes to the second part, then you're just negotiating the price at which you are willing to prostitute your "morals."

Be moral, always. Set the bar high.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since most business are decidedly not moral, being moral and playing on that morality should/would be successful. Just don't declare to "Don't be evil" and then do the opposite. Being moral is always the right thing to do despite the possible loss of profit. In the end, the moral company wins. Look no further than at every large IT player out there. Who really trusts them? Why? Because they acted immorally for money. Don't be that guy.

Hinderance??

[CrimsonAvenger]

I'm assuming that the author managed to mangle the spelling of "hindrance". Mostly because I'd have to be appalled that an "editor" could neither run spellcheck nor recognize a misspelled word...

On the other hand, this is /., so I shouldn't be surprised....