[Carrman]

Like Wayne said, profits and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Some of the posters here seem to think that a corporation is prohibited from doing anything socially beneficial, charitable or responsible.

In addition to doing things like providing jobs, etc., for-profit corporations and business donate (i.e., give) billions of dollars every year to all sorts of worthy causes.

And does a corporation have a conscience? Well, I guess as a non-human business form, it doesn't. But every business is run by people, and they exercise their conscience when they make a decision for the business. While of course profit is the main motive, they do have a conscience.

For example, if faced with a decision of making an additional profit of $1 per year at the cost of laying off 100 workers, I doubt any corporation in the world would lay off the workers. If the corporation truly had no conscience, and were driven, like a consciousless computer, solely by profit, you would not get that result. (Even assuming that there were no other negatives from firing the employees, i.e., no negative publicity, etc.) The humans making the decision just wouldn't let it happen.