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Many people have strong morals, and might resist profit-maximising behaviours, but they will be outcompeted and replaced by less scrupulous people. There is actually no sharp difference between a person and a one-person-company, but: to the degree a company is really a company and not just a person, it is amoral. If you disagree, please point to a moral backstop that would prevent any company from taking immoral acts. A few exist, but they are invariably resisted by the most powerful companies. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
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The people and procedures inside are the backstop.
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How many leadership meetings have you been in where some profitable approach was refused on an ethical basis? (rather than the basis that behaving ethically is actually more profitable, which is totally different)

By contrast, how many conversations have you personally had with people working at a company believing a profitable action was firmly unethical, but felt forced to behave that way due to "business realities" or some other whitewashing?

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I think in the end, could always reframe any moral decision as risk management but not sure that is ultimately helpful. I have certainly seen decisions that were taken because it didn't "sit" right to do something (profitable). I'd also say that I feel older (as in existing longer) businesses tend to be on average better there.

On the second point: my experience is rather that there is quite a variance in what is considered moral vs immortal and that often drives different decisions (in the same place, some do certain things, other don't and certain experise/people might not be available for X therefore). I cannot say that I have come across many situations where people did something they considered firmly immoral but felt they needed to go along with it (trying to recall some). Yes, finding justifications happens, too, but that isn't necessarily whitewashing as people do disagree to surprising levels.

(Changed to moral vs immoral, because that was the starting point.)

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can be the backstop. The word "can" is doing some extremely heavy lifting here, against corporate practices which dilute and spread guilt and responsibility for immoral decisions so thin, nobody in the decision chain even realizes something immoral has been decided.
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Have you ever been in committees approving new products or perhaps certain transactions? These chains aren't necessarily that long. But "can", sure, things could fail etc. and some places are better than others at it.
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Is this the same argument as "please point to a moral backstop that would prevent any person from taking immoral acts"? We usually hope that people will be moral, but can't enforce this.
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My point was that in big corporations, things are stacked against people wanting to act morally.
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Nursing has been around for a long time and they have not yet had the ethics in their field crushed by some of the biggest forces in our corporate-friendly system. High school teachers too. I could probably come up with a dozen more given half an hour to think about it. Don't give up so easily. People fought hard to get us here.
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Your neighborhood examples are on an incomparably smaller scale than Meta et al.

It’s much easier to disregard the human cost of decisions when you are separated from said humans by thousands of miles & billions of dollars.

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You're comparing small business to a corporation? Right.
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But what happens when one of those businesses in your village strikes it big and becomes a multi-national baking good company. They hire a lot of MBAs, take investor money and then need to stay profitable to meet those obligations. Add to the fact that the people now running the business live nowhere near the village. Will they still make the most ethical decisions about keeping employees past their prime?, paying them a fair wage?

History shows this is not the case.

I'm happy for you to live in a place where the local economy is so vibrant. This is what capitalism should have been. Instead we got WallMart.

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Bet none of them have a chief ethicist tho.
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I know people like that, you are not wrong.

The problem is that corporations completely subvert any individual morality that might indicate that generating money is the only moral thing to do. Typically in small businesses. I comaider small businesses owners in general are a lot closer to labor than to capital owners in general terms, especially when their labor is still a large part of what keeps the business going.

Corporations are not that, those are hyper optimized for generating profits, all else be damned. Preferably if all else is damned.

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I know. The local newspaper believes the same thing. And the local events are all sponsored by businesses. Who could question all of this evidence?

> But it appears that is not how your world works. By default any company owner is a homo-sapiens, but a machine that only wants money. Tragically, your cynicism is creating the very world you hate.

They said companies are amoral at best.

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