Interesting.
The talk of moral obligation is always directed towards the individual involved in a transaction with a corporation, but it never works the other way around corporation.
If you have a dispute your mortgage holder, a bank, credit card holder, car lien holder, and go into court and start talking about thier “moral obligation” to you, you’ll get laughed out of court. The only thing that matters as far as a corporation goes is its “legal obligation.”
If corporations don’t have a moral obligation towards an individual they are doing business with, why does the individual have a moral obligation towards the corporation for the same given transaction?
Agreed. I am way upside down (like many) and have considered walking away but there are so many emotional aspects to a “home” not just the structure of the house.
The question I thought of is: can a corporation (not the people working for it or the owners, but just the legal entity) have moral obligations as well?
A very good question. One that will draw a lot of ridicule from the morality police here at FR, though none will bother to answer you.
You asked, “If corporations don’t have a moral obligation towards an individual they are doing business with, why does the individual have a moral obligation towards the corporation for the same given transaction?”
Because my morality does not depend upon the behavior of others but is a matter between me and God.
The “But Timmy did it!” excuse expires in first grade.
That old “two wrongs don’t make a right” thing.
Corporations are owned by individual shareholders, they don't care about morality, they care about profits.