This is a very powerful fact about cooperates. By deligating different authorities and by hiring people with different personalities into different departments a corporate can simultaneously be th kind of cooperative entity that cooperates on a one shot prisoners dilemma and the kind of greedy entity that can credibly claim to reject anything less than an 80-20 split in it’s favor in an ultimatum game.
You can transform one obviously evil entity into a functionally equivalent structure of N mini-entities with limited powers, where all the mini-entities can signal good intentions but are forbidden (by other parts and/or by the system) to act upon them.
It’s as if I modified my own source code to make me completely selfish, and then said to others: “Look, I am a nice person; I really feel with you, and I honestly would like to help you… but unfortunately I cannot, because I have this stupid source code which does not allow me to act this way.”
But if I did it this way, you would obviously ask me: “So if you are such a nice person, why did you modify your source code this way?”
But it works if my source code was written by someone else. People somehow don’t ask: “So if you are such a nice person, and the rules are bad, why did you agree to follow such bad rules?” Somehow we treat the choice of following some else’s rules as a morally neutral choice.
The excuse “I was just following orders” is pretty discredited these days.
For a Nazi before a war tribunal, yes.
For an employee who by following company orders makes the price negotiation more difficult for a customer, no.
The difference is probably based on price negotiation not being percieved as a moral problem. Thus the employee removes some of your possible utility, but he is not doing anything immoral. Following orders which are not considered immoral is still an acceptable excuse.
This is a very powerful fact about cooperates. By deligating different authorities and by hiring people with different personalities into different departments a corporate can simultaneously be th kind of cooperative entity that cooperates on a one shot prisoners dilemma and the kind of greedy entity that can credibly claim to reject anything less than an 80-20 split in it’s favor in an ultimatum game.
You can transform one obviously evil entity into a functionally equivalent structure of N mini-entities with limited powers, where all the mini-entities can signal good intentions but are forbidden (by other parts and/or by the system) to act upon them.
It’s as if I modified my own source code to make me completely selfish, and then said to others: “Look, I am a nice person; I really feel with you, and I honestly would like to help you… but unfortunately I cannot, because I have this stupid source code which does not allow me to act this way.”
But if I did it this way, you would obviously ask me: “So if you are such a nice person, why did you modify your source code this way?”
But it works if my source code was written by someone else. People somehow don’t ask: “So if you are such a nice person, and the rules are bad, why did you agree to follow such bad rules?” Somehow we treat the choice of following some else’s rules as a morally neutral choice.
The excuse “I was just following orders” is pretty discredited these days.
For a Nazi before a war tribunal, yes.
For an employee who by following company orders makes the price negotiation more difficult for a customer, no.
The difference is probably based on price negotiation not being percieved as a moral problem. Thus the employee removes some of your possible utility, but he is not doing anything immoral. Following orders which are not considered immoral is still an acceptable excuse.