Reply to post: Of course it's not surprising.

Of course it's not surprising.

From the world-historical view, capitalism has never had a reason to develop a code of moral or ethical behaviour. Businesses do business to make money. Nothing else.

Yes, it is efficient for businesses to operate honestly, because it facilitates customer relations and contractual trust -- both good for making money. But other than such policies, which help make money, there is no incentive for capitalism to be altruistic.

Ideally, societies create non-capitalist structures which are then empowered to work for the common good. Yeah, you already know what I'll write next: Ideally, one of the major functions of governments in the capitalist world is to regulate capitalism itself. To enforce the common good, ie, to make sure that businesses to adhere to moral and ethical standards. Stuff like consumer and workplace safety, pollution mitigation, so forth. Yadda yadda. Oh, yeah, and slavery is a great capitalistic boon, but it's so morally repugnant that we regulated it out of existence. In most countries, anyway...

Naturally, it's exactly the same in socialist or communist worlds -- governments regulate communist or socialist structures too. But it turns out that: 1) Pure planned economies are awfully clunky, and mostly don't work; and 2) The leadership in communist and socialist governments tends toward authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and dictatorship.

So much for that.

But of course it's not surprising that Google and Facebook have developed ways to evade scrutiny and regulation. Including strong-arm tactics with grants, lobbyists, and political money. That is capitalism par excellence: do anything and everything in the service of making more money.

The real problems here are that governments are so easily corrupted, that researchers are so easily hobbled, and that the public are so easily duped.

This ought to be ironic for libertarians and knee-jerk deregulators, I would think. This flap with Google and Facebook demonstrates, yet again, that businesses are very, very good at evading and degrading regulation. They will find a way to make money even in the face of stringent regulation. So societies -- thou and I, actually -- would be better off always pushing for more regulation, and never for less.

Rather like the virus that causes HIV, businesses will adapt and proliferate. No need to worry about that. What we do need to worry about -- in re Google, Facebook, et al -- is that without stringent regulation, capitalism becomes a social disease. No, not that kind of social disease! Put away the condom. I mean, a disease which afflicts society.