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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1561742" data-attributes="member: 10201">OK, my google-fu is weak. Can you point to me some figures showing that big corps, on average, give a larger percentage of either their profits or their sales to charities, than do small businesses? That's a very good point. But it's the very fact that it's in service to marketing that it disappoints me. And worries me--because the impetus isn't "do good", the impetus  is "have a good reputation", and there's too much disconnect between those two, IMHO. And, in any case, if i had to choose between a corp donating 5% of profits to charities, or decreasing profits by 5% in order to raise their lowest-wage employees' wages, i think that the latter would almost always do more good. For that matter, the disparity between CEO and assembly-line worker (or cashier, or whatever) in salary is simply ridiculous. It's yet another symptom of not valuing the employee--how else can you claim that one person is worth, say, 300x as much as another to the business?By sidestepping the real issues. Nobody was complaining that WalMart didn't donate enough money to charities. If they don't raise wages, eliminate the glass ceiling, provide proper breaks, stop tolerating sub-minimum-wage workers, and in other ways clean up their employment practices, they haven't improved their behavior. Based on their current tact (ad campaign, emphasizing charity donations), i have to conclude that it is cheaper to mount an ad campaign, and/or give to charities, than to pay their employees more. Which gets back to the whole "so what they give to charities--they're not giving enough money to matter to them."  Someone is not being generous giving up money they don't need. Whether that is a person or a corporation. Generosity is giving to others that which is of value to you.Well, only time (and investigative journalism) will tell. I really do hope you're right. But i have my doubts.First, like i said, i've never put Hasbro in the "big evil corporation" box (whether or not that designation is reasonable). Second, speaking of corporations that i might advocate, or at least condone, theft against: --no, wait, i don't ever advocate theft, just condone it. I simply said that the Kantian test of "what if everybody did it" doesn't clearly argue against theft in those circumstances. Yes, at the extreme, people will be out of jobs. Yes, the pittance of those profits that was going to charities won't be any more. I'm not unaware of the consequences. That is not the same as saying that i think those consequences are worse than whatever damage the corporations are doing by their existence. It's the old "lesser of two evils" argument. It is also utterly subjective. That is, we can argue about the consequences, but even once we agree on what they are it becomes a subjective opinion as to which is the worse. Partly, i'm seeing this from a very-long-term POV. The damage i see IP-controlling companies doing could have detrimental effects (both direct and secondary) for centuries. A few tens of thousands of people out of jobs is likely to have effects that last only a generation or two--and possibly not even that long.</blockquote>

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