our corporates dont love our own country

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our corporates dont live our own country

We're living in a world where people expect (relatively) cheap consumer goods and services, and where things which until quite recently were luxuries are now considered essentials. Those products are so (relatively) cheap because the producers will move or outsource wherever labour costs are lowest, and wherever business/financial rules and taxation regimes are most lenient. Profits beat patriotism for most corporations, and certainly for the multi-nationals. Any corporations which do have patriotic principles will likely find themselves struggling to compete for market share - they may have to choose between sacrificing their principles, selling-up to one of the multi-nationals, or shutting down. So the multi-national ethos can only grow stronger unless enough consumers are prepared, or can even afford, to pay the premium for locally produced goods, and/or boycott imported/outsourced products. Much the same is true in any country, aside from those with a government-controlled command economy.

Money is the root of all evil.

A company is basically an amoral collective intelligence. The only thing that matters to it is increasing short-term profit for its shareholders and senior executives*. Anything else - ethics, labour rights, the national interest, environmental responsibility - is an eccentricity or indulgence that gets in the way of that goal. And our culture encourages everyone to believe that this is a desirable state of affairs. I can see only two ways to get the thing to care about anything other than money-

Regulate the hell out of it. Show the company that if it uses sweatshop labour or trashes entire ecosystems, they will will be hit so hard for it the bottom drops out of their share price.

Make enough people aware of the issues and voting with their wallets that the company must improve its ethics to retain its customers.

*Arguably, bloated executive pay is parasitic on the company, but feeding the parasites within just makes it more hungry.

^^ this.
Corporations are not people, they are incapable of love. They are AI, programmed to turn the world into capital (i.e., money to make more money). Corporations use people to make more capital and yes, you could see excessive executive pay as parasitic. But if executives earned way less, say only twice as much as the average worker... That would change nothing about the functioning of the corporation. It would just have more capital to invest and grow, i.e., it would grow faster.

There isno way for a corporation to change anything about this, it's a machine built for a purpose, not a sentient being. Intelligence without consciousness.
Lobbying against regulations is one of the machine's defense mechanisms.

And for a while, economists have tried to instill into people that they, too, are machines of that kind.
But humans actually enjoy other things beside capital, and they are conscious and aware that short-term profit-oriented thinking is detrimental to long term survival and happiness.
The question is: are humans able to reign in the machines they have created?

Corporations aren’t literally people, but they are made up of people - employees and shareholders.

I personally believe that a corporation has two responsibilities:

- look after shareholders and employees
- follow the law

Some corporations go beyond that. Prominent examples in the U.K. at least are Lush, Johnson & Johnson, and Severn Trent Water. But in general, if you want corporations to do good then the government should be enforcing it.

A zero-regulation free market does not work. There are many market failures such as externalities, information asymmetry, and power imbalances. It is completely appropriate for governments to address these. A true free market can only occur when everyone involved is making free and informed decisions. That said, regulations should be targeted and minimal - better one effective regulation than three part-jobs.

As stated by several previous posters, there is really no particular reason to impute such a lofty motive as "love for one's country" to for-profit companies.

This is especially true for publicly traded stock companies in highly competitive markets, where failure to operate with a sufficient profit may limit the company's ability to raise capital... or even put it at risk of a hostile takeover.

However, history has shown that private companies - on average - are somewhat more efficient at alleviating poverty and generating wealth for the citizens of most countries than governments.

Perhaps this is because Love Our Own Country ≠ Love *the people of* Our Own Country.

The way I see it, the biggest failure of corporations is when it comes to environmental protection, where externalities prevent the market mechanism from taking all costs into account. But in this case, countries share much (and perhaps even more) of the blame as well, as the scale required for efficient environmental regulation often necessitates government involvement.

Our countries don't love our own planet, it would seem...

Corporations have no responsibility to their home nation, they have no responsibility to their customers, they have no responsibility to their employees. They only have a responsibility to generate profits for their shareholders.

This is why regulation is required, because they're inherently amoral entities. They're not motivated by moral considerations, they're motivated by incentives and disincentives.