Optics as Ethics: The Paradox of Corporate Morality
Modern capitalism operates with a peculiar moral compass. Systemic harm is absorbed and normalized. Personal scandal is punished swiftly and without mercy.
Nestlé illustrates this paradox in its starkest form. The baby formula scandal in Africa. The privatization of water in drought-stricken regions. The persistence of child labor in cocoa supply chains. Price fixing, environmental destruction, the quiet devastation of communities from Pakistan to South America.
These are not allegations. They are public record. Each time, Nestlé “regrets,” announces reform, and moves on. The brand endures. The profits grow. The harm disperses into subsidiaries, suppliers, and “market forces.” No single executive is ever held to account.
And yet: when a CEO engages in a consensual relationship with an employee, he is removed—swiftly, publicly, definitively.
Corporations defend such decisions as risk management. Even a consensual affair between manager and subordinate carries potential for coercion claims, hostile work environment suits, or reputational fallout. Better to act decisively. But the disproportion remains glaring. Decades of systemic exploitation tolerated; one personal indiscretion punished without hesitation.
The financial world tells the same story. The global crisis of 2008 wiped out millions of jobs and homes. Yet few bankers faced consequences. Instead, “rogue traders” became global villains—because a good story needs a face. The system itself never stands trial; individuals are sacrificed to preserve legitimacy.
The ancients claimed to judge differently. In Egypt’s Hall of Ma’at, Anubis weighed the heart of the dead against the feather of truth and justice. A heavy heart was devoured, a light one passed on. That was the theory—the promise of cosmic balance. In reality, pharaohs built empires on conquest and slavery while invoking Ma’at to sanctify their rule.
Our age repeats the pattern under new banners. Where once Christendom invoked divine order to sanctify bad kings and selfish popes, we now invoke “human rights,” “sustainability,” and “corporate responsibility” to whitewash shady business practices. The world turned secular, but the ritual remained. These are incantations, not balances. The reality on the ground—in cocoa fields or aquifers—is that global corporations structure supply chains precisely so responsibility cannot be pinned on them. Farmers are “independent.” Contractors are “partners.” The harm is indirect, and so it dissolves into the system.
A corporation can drain rivers and benefit from cocoa harvested by children, yet float on the stock exchange.
A CEO caught in the wrong bed proves too heavy for the feather.
This is not uniquely Nestlé. It is a structural feature of global capitalism, especially in publicly traded firms. Shareholder primacy and quarterly earnings embed perverse incentives. Systemic sins—because they are profitable—are normalized. Personal sins—because they threaten brand value—are punished.
Morality is no longer about harm. It is about optics.
How we look at this is itself a kind of Rorschach test. Some will see corruption, others inevitability, still others just the logic of markets. What follows is only my view; there are other views, as there always are when power is the subject.
But perhaps it is more than a question of corporations. It is a way of looking at ourselves. The system is not alien—it is built from human choices, our compromises, our willingness to look away. If the scales are inverted, it is because we inverted them.
Can we redeem ourselves? Can human nature bend toward truth and dignity? Or is this simply what we are—creatures forever cloaking power in morality, forever repeating the same performance under new names?
The only counterweight comes from outside the system—from citizens, from culture, from those who refuse to play by the script. One could argue even these forces get absorbed: protest becomes branding, rebellion becomes lifestyle, critique becomes content. And yet, without them, nothing shifts at all. Power bends but does not break, but sometimes the margins of culture pry open cracks the system cannot seal.
And this now is my personal hope: in those cracks, however fleeting, one still sees the outline of something ungoverned—truth, dignity, the stubborn weight of a human heart against the feather.