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

[roman_mir]

Capitalism (private ownership and operation of property) in a free market system (system free of government intervention) has proven to be the best system for generating profits while improving the overall economy for all people involved. People tossed out the free market and they are trying really hard to toss out capitalism as well, they saw all the wealth generated in a free market capitalist system and believe that that wealth is gained somehow immorally, however I argue that making profits in a capitalist free market system is the most moral way to run an economy.

I say the most moral and I mean exactly that:profit motive in a free market capitalist system is the most moral way to run an economy. All other ways to run an economy require reduction of freedoms (bigger government) and reduction of property rights (move from capitalism to any form of dictatorship, be it socialism or fascism, which are almost the same thing exactly or be it just a singular ruler or a feudal system). Anything that reduces individual freedoms is less moral than anything that increases individual freedoms. Anything that reduces private property rights and self determination through these rights is less moral than than anything that increases private property rights and self determination.

AFAIC the profit motive is the most moral way to run a society because it is the most moral way to run an economy without stealing and without using collective violence against an individual.

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

[Dzimas]

Hire a better scriptwriter?

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

[RabidReindeer]

You say a lot. I say a little. It has the virtue that there are less moving parts that have to function properly for it to work.

There's an old adage: "Nothing succeeds like success". It has variants like "Nobody got fired for buying IBM (Microsoft, or whatever the current 800 lb gorilla in the industry is).

Microsoft and IBM didn't reach monopoly size because some government passed a law favoring them or restricting their competitors. They reached it because the bigger they got the bigger they could get. Most free markets are what engineers call "positive feedback loops". Once you're big enough, you can certainly buy government, but once you're big enough, you can buy just about anything at wholesale rates.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[gstoddart]

You create a hypothetical out of vacuum while pretending that a situation like that arises in a free market capitalist system, it does not.

Look, your entire reasoning is a hypothetical out of a vacuum based on unsubstantiated claims that your beloved free market achieves the outcomes you claim it does, and doesn't devolve into all of the bad things you claim it won't.

Sooner or later, some entity will decide that your perfectly abstract, morally superior pile of crap fiction is no fun, and they're going to use their own threat of violence.

Or someone is going to decide that, why should I play fairly when I can cheat?

Or several someone's will get together to for a cartel and collectively cheat.

In a free market capitalist economy markets discover prices that allow markets to clear, that means the prices adjust accordingly to the supply and demand for all things, including all types of labour and capital and land and other assets and resources.

See, this is the fundamental flaw in your argument: prove it .

You can't, because you are basing it off an idealized theory in a vacuum. It's a religion, it's not some intrinsic fact of the universe. It's an ideology.

You are claiming that something which has never existed will achieve perfect and desirable outcomes because it is inherently perfect.

I'm saying it's never existed, never can exist, and that your theory completely assumes an impossible level of perfection of human nature, which isn't borne out by what actual humans actually do.

Your vision of free market economics is as deluded, irrational, and utterly false as the deluded, irrational, and utterly false premises of Communism. In their pure, unadulterated (and therefore mythical and impossible), neither Communism nor Capitalism as you describe it will ever have a hope in hell of achieving the outcomes you claim.

They're both crap when you take them to absurd extremes.

It's a really nice fantasy. But, it is purely a fantasy -- if your vision of the most perfectly awesome society imaginable is blind to actual human nature, it's nothing more than the ravings of a deluded fool. Because people will not naturally do anything other than seek to gain advantage for themselves.

Capitalism will devolve into kings and oligarchs, in much the same way Communism did. Because humans are inherently greedy bastards who will never abide by any rules unless someone forces them to.

And claiming your system will have perfect outcomes because it's so inherently perfect it has to? That's complete and utter crap.

And, go ahead, say Austrian School ... I'll just laugh in your face and yawn. It's just more of the same drivel.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[matbury]

To simply say that "free market capitalism works" isn't even wrong. Economies are complex and mixed. There has never been a purely free market economy anywhere in the world and there never will be. Thinking that one approach, one tool, and one set of measures will be appropriate for all cases and scenarios is plainly wrong. Economic policies, approaches, tools, and measures need to be selected and adjusted according to the circumstances in each case. Sometimes monetarism is appropriate, e.g. at the start of a period of growth, sometimes a more Keynesian policy, e.g. in a recession, etc.

Only a misinformed amateur would think that it's feasible to throw all the tools out of the box except one. Try listening to real economists instead of the amoral money grabbing psychopaths at the Chicago School, Wall St., and on Fox News.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[gstoddart]

My 'beloved' free market created the USA economy of 19th century

No, the thing which created that economy was not your fictional, romanticized version of a free market economy, and it never was.

Yes, it was a form of Capitalism, but you have a completely made up idea of how it really worked.

The reality is that you allowed yourself to be placed into a very tiny box by your government propaganda 'education' system.

No, the reality is you're full of shit and have already devolved into ad hominem attacks.

Do you understand how crazy you sound when you say stuff like this?

I've read Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Ghandi, Marx, Aristotle, Neitzsche, John Locke, and shit I've forgotten about. I've drank the kool-aid, lived to tell the tale, and moved on.

It is my considered opinion that all of these systems have interesting things to tell us, absolutely none of them carry some Bright Universal Truth, and that many of them carry seeds of some pretty scary ideas when taken to extremes.

I don't believe you can create a just society when you leave people to starve in the streets and die of illness.

I don't believe you can create anything other than new lords and serfs through unfettered capitalism, because power accumulates and corrupts.

I don't believe you can have a utopian society in which everybody has everything they could ever hope for.

I don't believe you can have a functioning society if the only thing your government does is enforce contracts and property rights for people who have the money to benefit from them -- while saying that everything else is a private matter, because then you're just enforcing law to benefit people who own stuff.

And I don't believe you can have a stable society unless you realize you're going to have to pay for its upkeep.

I believe all categorical statements are wrong, or incomplete (including this one).

So, believe me when I say this ... my rejection of your position as overly simplistic, naive, and one which you ascribe outcomes I don't believe it can achieve ... that's based on a considered investigation of it, and finding it immensely lacking and unable to achieve what you claim.

I'm the heretic to your religion of Capitalism and the Holy Free Market. Because I reject it not as a result of government propaganda, but from actually looking at it.

I think it's bullshit precisely because I used to believe it.

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

[AuMatar]

I've read many issues. 100% of it agrees with what I said above. They believe they have no duties or responsibilities to their fellow man or society, and they redefine the terms "freedom" and "rights" to be a tautology of what they believe in. From a logical standpoint they have no ground to stand on. From a moral viewpoint they are the most vile philosophy on the face of the earth, the entire point is to allow themselves to feel morally superior for throwing away all sense of empathy and care. And that's the kindest way I can think of to describe it.

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

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[david_thornley]

under what scenario have people actually left children to starve?

Are you saying that no child in the world is starving? Or ever has been starving in a capitalist society that wasn't currently in a famine? The human race produces plenty enough food to feed everybody, after all. I think you need to actually look at the world around you and see if it matches what your ideology predicts.

You do know why Ireland was a food exporter during the potato famine, right? Private property and no government safety net: with the potato blight going on the poor didn't have enough land to grow enough food to survive, and the rich who owned plenty of land didn't care.

Re:Capitalism does not reward morality

[vux984]

So you helped somebody when they were down, you provided charity

Yes. I did exactly that. I didn't have to though. And had I chosen not to, I've no idea how far they might have fallen.

And that is the fundamental issue. Society cannot *rely* on me to be charitable as a fundamental underpinning. Those people NEED that support, so the society should have mechanisms to provide it built in that do not amount to "Gee golly I sure hope *somebody* steps up and does what needs doing." THAT is precisely why communism fails.

Most people are not born into a vast empty space, they have a family or somebody taking care of them until they are of such age that they can take care of themselves. Parents / relatives / charity / adopted parents.

You are stating the obvious. That is the ONLY reason the system is working as well as it is right now. But those necessary support mechanisms are not PART of the system.

I argue that those support systems are clearly a necessary and fundamental part of the system and should therefore be integrated into the system so that it can be relied upon.

Charity isn't sufficient. It isn't reliable. It isn't there for everyone equally. It fails people all the time. Whereas my friend landed on my couch, there are thousands of people who didn't land on anyones couch. You'll need to do better than "well if someone needs support, he can hope someone has a couch he can land on" because not everyone will land on a couch if you just handwave around the problem and bleat that surely somebody will volunteer their couch, because no... someone doesn't always.

In the long run you end up hurting everybody while pretending that you are moral by using government initiation of violence against individuals and destroying individual freedoms, destroying free market capitalism.

You have no evidence for this. The best places to live in the world are currently strong socialisms with a regulated free market. There are plenty of problems with them to be sure. But they are better than anything else around. Pure unregulated capitalism? Somalia? Comes close. 18th century western countries with debtors prisons & work houses (effectively slaves, indentured servitude, serfs, and then there were actual slaves too) and so forth -- these were not better places nor better times. Certainly not better more moral societies.

Punishing someone for financial failure with slavery (effective or outright) is not moral.

You ramble on an on and on about how taxation etc is immoral. And in a way I even agree that it is. But it is not the only moral question facing a society, and compromise between multiple moral imperatives is required. Reasonable levels of taxation is a better solution than anything else being practiced right now. I'm happy to entertain alternatives, but you have none. You only demand that taxation be ended and that charity will cover it.

But we know it won't. History has shown it doesn't. It didn't keep people out of the debtors prisons and workhouses 200 years ago. And its not going serve society any better today. So what else have you got?

The key word is start ups.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Once you get to be too big to fail, you also become too big to jail. Banksters like Jamie Dimon would simply call the fed and ask it to call off this investigation or that probe. So it is beyond question lack of moral compass helps the big companies. It is when they are small people are debating about it.

Re:morality a hindrance or help?

[CrankyFool]

You raise a really good point that gets ignored often.

As a startup, you're fighting not just for money and customers, but also talent. Speaking as your typical tech person in the bay area, I'll say that the place is lousy with startups doing interesting tech work where I could solve interesting problems, and it's full with a plethora of places that will pay me well. One thing that I consider in companies is their moral and ethical profile. I work where I work because, irrespective of the crazy wages and the problems, I feel like it leads the way in ethical and humane management of high-performance engineers, and its approach to its customers is transparent and ethical. I wouldn't work for a company I considered evil, or whose execs I had serious ethical problems with -- and Uber falls into that category.

Summary: Not appearing like you're ethical will noticeably impact your ability to compete for talent.

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."

My guess ...

[MacTO]

... and it is only a guess:

Most startups need a moral compass in order to recruit and retain employees who are invested in the success of the company. If the startup doesn't offer that, there is a high probability that quality employees will move on when better opportunities arise. (Examples are higher pay, better benefits, or a more stable job. These are all things that startups find difficult to provide.) Depending upon their clients, it may also serve to separate the startup from the competiton.

Yet Uber (and the likes) are not your typical startups. Since they are trying operate in a highly regulated industry, and in an industry where the regulations vary from place to place, they are very politicized. Unfortunately politicized issues make it very difficult to have a clean fight because those with a vested interest have the existing power structures (politicians, courts, etc.) on their side.

The answer is yes.

[hey!]

IF: you have a moral compass.
THEN: having a moral compass is a help to your achieving your ends.

On the other hand,

IF: you don't have a moral compass.
THEN: not having a moral compass is a help to your achieving your ends.

In other words the question is meaningless unless you stipulate "help or hinderance to what". Also you need to specify the behavioral flexibility of the people in question. Someone who is strictly immoral -- that is to say he never does anything moral if he has an evil alternative -- would have to be irrational. The eviler alternative is not always the rational choice.

Also moral/amoral doesn't capture everything about somebody's thinking and character. Some people are amoral and shortsighted. Others are amoral but can see the long term value of curbing their behavior. On the other hand some people are strictly moral but rigid and unimaginative. Others are highly moral and creative. To a creative person an obstacle is often an opportunity.

Ultimately you are who you are: goodie-two-shoes or amoral bastard or something in between. Whatever you are you have to make that work for yourself.

Re:Amoral

[neminem]

I'd argue that a purely "logical" version of "morality" that you describe does apply to corporations exactly in the same way that it applies to individuals: if it's based on being nice to someone so they'll be nice to you, that only describes morality as far as anyone knows about (i.e. the sociopathic version of morality). A corporation doesn't want to get caught stealing any more than an individual does: while the legal punishments might be sadly far less for corporations (generally, a slap on the wrist fine that does little to discourage them from continuing to do it), the real harm comes from the media, which is *exactly* equivalent to what you describe.

You want to be nice because if you're not, you'll have a reputation and people won't want to do business with you; a company might want to be nice because if it isn't, it will also have a reputation, and I won't want to do business with it, either. There are plenty of businesses on that list for me, that because of some shady deal or another, I just won't do any business with them. They didn't specifically harm me, but they've harmed enough other people that they have that reputation for harming people, so why would I want to do business with them?

Of course, the sociopathic version of that is, just don't get *caught* doing anything that would give you that reputation. But the same also technically applies to individuals.