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Are business ethics or profits more important?

This Debate has 18 articles on the Ethics side and 7 articles on the Profits side. Click here to see all the articles rated and ranked by Helium members.

Ethics

Profits

Are business ethics or profits more important? Yes! It totally depends upon whom you are asking this question. Are you asking it to the C.E.O. of the Company, the President of said Company? Are you asking the shareholders, or the people who live just a little downstream from the Factory? If you ask Mr. Backwoods, whose little daughter, Tammy, was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of Cancer, that is closely associated with one or more toxins being released by the Factory that was built just upstream from them, I am sure you would get the answer "Business ethics do not exist. Business in its' nature is meant to devour the competition, and hook as many people as possible on buying their products for as long, and for as much, as possible, and with totally no regards to the after-effects of said products or the processes involved in making said products". A little lawyerly, I know, but you, dear reader, get the idea, right?

Okay, show of hands here - who thinks that ethics are really more important than the almighty Buck? (If you have, or are working for a Naturist related Company, like Greenpeace, or Tree-Huggers Without Borders, please abstain from voting). If you're answer yes, please move to the right, where you will find a police officer and a lie detector test. If you pass the test, and make under $50,000 a year in total income, you must be morally blind.

If a Company is doing all sorts of things to improve the toxins that they release into Nature, they are doing it because, firstly, they were told to by a Judge, and secondly, because there was, indeed, a problem in the first place. If they are costing hundreds of thousands' of peoples their livelihoods, do you think that they will stop, and stop making Billions of Dollars a year in the process? Not a chance. Ethics has no place in business. The most ethical of all businesses is Bankrupt, because an immoral company bought it in a Hostile Takeover.

Are profits more important than ethics? In business, unfortunately, the answer has to be a resounding YES. In Society, though, we find a completely different answer.

Of course, with the Earth facing what She is now; with the Green-House Gasses, the depletion of the Ozone Layer, the melting Ice Caps, Oceans turned into dumping grounds already that were already faced with over-fishing to the point of Species' Extinction, Companies have, thank God, become somewhat more ethical, to the point of newly introduced Legislations, lets' not fool ourselves here. If they didn't have to do it, they most probably would not have done it, and this "it" could be almost anything, as long as it was good for "the company line".