bedlam - 7:55 pm on Jul 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

People hate Microsoft because they're big

IMHO, this is a perfectly acceptable reason to be seriously ambivalent about the role of an organization.

Microsoft doesn't have armies or navies, but it is powerful, and it is at the very least not obvious that the exercise of their power - including their good deeds, I might add - is aimed at anything other than increasing profit and consolidating power.

The book I mentioned above uses the word 'pathological' in its title advisedly. The main thesis of the book is that, if you run the characteristics of a typical corporation through a standard personality test, the result you get is, or resembles, 'psychopath'.

The way large corporations typically behave is what philosophers and ethicists call 'egoism' - in other words, the maximization of self-interest. The problem many people have with Microsoft - and many other corporations - is that we are uncomfortable with entities so powerful being governed essentially by a principle that considers activities that increase profit to be uncontestedly good without real regard to (or even consideration of) their other consequences.

What if their interests and yours conflict?

-B