I have boycotted a certain international company, famous for its chocolate and milk products, for over 50 years. Does that company care? Not at all. They have long ago adjusted their market prognosis to allow for those of us who boycott it. If my boycotting them makes no difference then why do I continue? Because the only reason I would be stopping is because of the inconvenience of continuing the boycott. My inconvenience versus an implicit acceptance of their behavior — that is not a sufficient reason to stop boycotting them. They also have purchased a certain baby food brand. IF I still had small children that might be a reason to stop my boycott. The nutrition of my child versus an implicit acceptance of behavior. A hard call and I’m glad I don’t have to make it.
This company is not the only such company, of course. In the early 1970s, a well-known international automobile maker found themselves without a model to compete against the new small fuel-efficient cars. So, they rushed to complete a design. It turns out that, for other design considerations, they put the gasoline tank right at the back of the car. Cars were exploding when they were hit from behind. But, it took quite a few months before enough news (back when mainstream journalism was still a legitimate thing) reports triggered a backlash against the car manufacturer and they removed the model from the market.
Even now, we have international companies which have vestiges of their prior journalism departments. But if they dare to report the reality of abusive governmental people and bodies, they retract and pay fines rather than face the possibility of abuse of power and retribution. The actions MAY be in the best interests of their stock holders (probably not as they are also potential customers) but definitely not in the best interests of their customers.
What do these situations (and many others not described) have in common? Amorality.
This is a subject about which I have written a number of newsletters (or blogs) in the past. But, in our world of diminishing trust in the world around us, it continues to be a very important subject. For some, there is no distinction between amorality and immorality and perhaps they are correct. Immorality is doing something that you know is considered bad according to your societal standards. Amorality is allowing something bad to happen (possibly without understanding that it is bad but not caring) but not directly doing the bad thing. There is a gray area which asks if knowing about the action makes a person an accomplice.
In the above examples, the corporate decisions and actions are largely to do with money. If they could make the money without having the immoral actions occurring, that would be fine with them. But the money is more important. For the chocolate company, they add up the profits they make inappropriately selling their product. They balance that number against the cost of lawsuits for deaths, court costs, and restitution. So far, they make more money selling products and killing people. A similar situation existed for the automobile company. For the media company, none are killed directly but may be killed in related actions.
Similar situations exist for personal actions. Bullying someone is immoral. Knowing about the bullying and not doing anything is amoral (see what I mean about the gray area between immoral and amoral). Polluting the environment is immoral. Noticing the pollution and not doing anything about it is amoral. Deliberately harming, or killing, someone is immoral (and usually illegal) but recognizing the event and not doing anything about it is amoral. There are some situations in which it seems that there is nothing an individual can do anything to prevent it. But, there really is no excuse.
Amorality also exists when the company, or person, is unconcerned about GOOD effects of their actions. A company changes their waste flow to capture, and resell, some of the effluent which ends up with the company polluting less. Their action was to make more money via a better process and profitable side-effect but the end result was something good. People don’t complain about that (and I don’t either — I wish it would happen more often).
