How to make companies into engines of good: make harm unprofitable

One oversimplified but potentially useful way to think about corporate regulation is to prevent it from being profitable to cause harm. Of course, this can be very challenging to achieve, and one can debate what "harm" means, how broadly it should be construed, and what to do in cases where there is substantial uncertainty about how to make harm unprofitable. But insofar as it's unprofitable to cause harm, and companies behave as profit maximizers, companies are basically forces for good. ...
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How Companies Can Cause Harm

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I often have heard it said that if people buy the product a company is selling, then the company must be creating value in the world. After all, why would someone buy a product if that product were not creating value?  It would be nice if this were a valid argument (since then more units sold = more societal benefit). Unfortunately, it's not valid. To help put the argument to rest, here's a list of 13 situations where a product that doesn't add net value to the world may still get bo...
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