PHIL 270 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Profit Maximization, Moral Responsibility, Invisible Hand
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Business Ethics
3.01 Lecture Notes – Milton Friedman and John Mackie
· Main argument: corporate entities are not persons – not the things that are make decisions
· They a’t hae resposiility Frieda thiks is osese
· Corporations have responsibility – idiidual oers or the CEO/oard of diretors if it’s pulily
traded) have some kind of responsibility
· Any aggregation procedure (preference aggregation) – organizations having intentionality, not
reflected in any of the idiiduals’ preferees
· Collective entity with its own personality/preferences? – good reason to recognize a corporation as
something we can hold responsible for certain actions – codify into law?
· Should we be able to sue corporations?
· Reasons to have legal reogitio of orporatios’ persohood/agey
· Punishment may fall onto various individuals disproportionately, but not the group as a whole – legal
recognition should have this problem?
· We voted for Trump – encompasses people who actively opposed Trump
· Is it better to attribute group agency when there is a decision-making process that we tacitly agree to?
· What about voluntary agreements – joining unions? If you chose to join it for the bundle of goods that
you get from the decision-procedures, because of the expected utility on net, then you have
responsibility for what it does.
· Moral responsibility
· Causal responsibility
· The whole that is more than the sum of its parts – does it have a responsibility separate from the
idiiduals’ resposiilities?
· Involuntary membership – forced into joining the union (by law) – may not reflect your preferences
very well
o The team/union is the same regardless of who constitutes the team/union
· Rousseau – democracy expresses will – groups have intentionality
o Similar to Hobbes
· Ex: Unions
· Is some minimal sense of consent necessary? Does it have to actually make us better off or better off in
the expected sense?
o Imagine – prisoers’ dilea – reason why states are justified in forcing people to join unions
is the free-loader problem
o It is not rational individually to join the union, its rational to free-load and not pay the costs of
failure/membership whatever
o Joining involuntarily makes you better off
o But it’s also possile that the joiig akes you orse off
· When we talk about whether groups can be agents (responsibility, beliefs)
o Considerations: Members voluntarily agree to join them (yes/no)
▪ Not necessary? All that matters is that it makes you better off (expected or ex ante)
o Criteria for intentionality?
· David Hume – does’t eliee i tait oset ery uh – exit options are not very viable for leaving
the state
o Locke says – why does the state have authority over you (in the moral sense, moral obligation
to obey the law)
o Citizen of a country – never explicitly agreed, but tacitly did so
o Country provides goods for you that you use (roads, peace, military, etc.)
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