how does corporate greed cause enviromental and social problems?

[RUBoi]

how does corporate greed cause enviromental and social problems? and why wont the market stop it. in other words how would the market benefit from not caring abou the enviromen or social issues

[mickeykozzi]

This princple comes under something called externalities, that is, if i throw a pie at you and hit someone else, that 3rd party who had nothing to do with the situation is now affected.

Generally externalities come in the form of pollution, bad social habits, company influence over the population and so forth. Generally companies will let someone else pay for their externalities if they can. The market wont stop it in most cases because companies will lose money if they clean up their mess, hence higher operating costs, hence more expensive products.

[Meg]

Corporations cause problems when they do not have to pay the true cost of their production that should include the cost of the damage they do. This is a characteristic shared by all people, it is just that corporations are so large, so they do it in a concentrated way so we notice it more. Corporations are run by people, and the people that run them make decisions that maximize the profits, and if they do not they are fired an replaced by someone who will. If they increase their production cost in order to cause less damage they must charge higher prices or their profits will fall. However their customers will not pay the the higher prices when they can buy a cheaper product from a company that is not concerned about the damage, so profits will fall. The outcome of everyone decisions from customers to CEO's will be to produce pollution, even if all or most of the people making decision would be willing to pay for a better outcome. but they can not get the better outcome by acting alone. There are many aspects of society where this sort of problems arise, from building roads to national defense, which is why we create governments and give them power to enforce rules of behavior and to tax to pay for public goods.

[Sixtus]

The market won't stop it because its the nature of life and matter to be a little chaotic. Something happens, something reacts to it and changes to adapt.'
Everything doesn't just gradually change and get along at the same time.

Corporate greed is a function of the will of the people, generall the urge to be clothed fed, and spreading our seed far and wide.

As in nature when animals take this too far they can sometimes eat themselves out and die off a bit.

We are dying a bit now