This blog post briefly explains their legal setup:

https://blog.ecosia.org/trees-not-profits/

They don't just have intentions, they have legal requirements. It's fine to be cynical, but if we just assume that everything is always terrible, there is no incentive to not be terrible.

And how reliable are those legal requirements? One has to be very naive to believe that the law is some sort of ironclad constant of the universe. For someone with money, the law is simply an equation. It can be bypassed, molded or broken - the only balance is the money, the payoff. Did the law stop HSBC from laundering cartel money? Did the law stop Wirecard? When enough money is involved, people just look at it as a risk/reward or cost/payoff.

I'm optimistic about this effort. I have no doubts about their current intentions. But I'm not so naive as to believe that just because something is illegal right now, that this is some sort of bulletproof barrier against shenanigans in the future. So many companies have made promises like this, and so many of them amounted to nothing in the end. I'd simply rather believe them by their word than have to rely on these kinds of paper thin guarantees.

Are there differences between what non-profits are allowed to do in Germany vs the US?

I'm assuming that German has stricter rules, but I wouldn't know.

It doesn't matter what the law allows unfortunately. If enough money is involved, everything is possible. Law is what people make it, and people can be bought and sold. It's not some fundamental physical constant of the universe.

This is why statements like this feel like empty posturing (even if the intentions are genuine and good).

Then why have laws in the first place? Seriously, that's just self-defeating cynicism.

I haven't looked into Ecosia, but they seem to be a GmbH, a limited liability company in Germany. This allows a lot of wiggle room!

A foundation (that's another legal form in Germany, but note that the name "foundation" itself is not protected.) would probably be a better alternative, but due to the way foundations (the legal form) are designed, they are hard to setup and maintain, i.e. expensive. Anyway, Ecosia is also part of a growing movement for steward-ownership that's promoting a new legal form called "Gesellschaft mit gebundenen Vermögen" (GmgV, Company with bound capital). The German department of justice is involved, and while this does not promise a speedy delivery, there are drafts and it does show attention on the highest level.

Let's cheer those people on than lazily dismiss them.

I'm not dismissing them at all, but I have become much more cynical about the outcomes of starry eyed promises like this. Again, I have no doubts about their intentions, I have doubts about those intentions staying the same over time. I have doubts about intentions staying just as pure when VC money enters the game.

Let's take a step back here: do you seriously believe that the law applies equally to everyone? That it's unbending and a bullet proof backstop?

My views are definitely more cynical than when I was younger, but this was shaped by decades of witnessing the erosion in the rule of law. It's obvious that there's two kinds of law: one for those with wealth and power and one for those without. And the law is very malleable for the former group - in fact it is usually shaped to benefit them. They only have to straddle the line to avoid making it too obvious. You don't have to go far either: wasn't it in Germany where they weaponized the police and the justice system to harass journalists who exposed the Wirecard scheme?

So no, I'm not going to put much faith in statements like "oh we are legally not allowed to do X", because that just means "we are not likely to do it under the current circumstances". You have to be exceptionally naive to believe that a sufficiently motivated investor would be unable to find a convenient loophole if required.

I guess this is also a cultural difference. In Germany, there are obviously still people who believe that the law is some sort of serious warranty for people to keep their promise. I'm afraid this is again only applicable to those without money and power. I'm sure the German legal system will bear down with it's full might on any small time company or enterprise that breaks the law. I have very serious doubts about them doing this for the big boys. Again, we just need to look at Wirecard...

To reiterate, this is not a judgement on this effort or their motives. It is simply a statement about the current world, where all over the globe we see case after case of unbridled greed and everything eventually being beholden to more money.

So you seem to think the struggle is already forfeit. That's your choice, but, you know, not fighting means you already lost.

But things are not lost. The very example you cite, Wirecard, despite the attempts to silence the Financial Times (of London, BTW. Wirecard "weaponized" the British justice system) in 2019, has been charged by the German regulator BaFin in 2020 and the scandal is slowly but surely worked out. As of today, three top managers have been sentenced in civil processes to pay damages, 2 more cases are currently heard, 21 more are investigated, and 11 have been exonerated. And this is just civil/trade law, criminal law is also prosecuted. Braun is held in custody, the hearings are ongoing. Marsalek is on the run and presumably hiding in Russia. Erffa and Bellenhaus are about to receive their sentences. Steidl and Knoop are about to have their first hearings this year. Those are all C-level managers.

Could this all go faster? It sure would be nice. But this is better than what you seem to think what is happening. Furthermore, this is all orthogonal to Ecosia's pledge.

I'm not talking about the struggle, you seem intent on arguing against a strawman. I'm all for the struggle. What I don't believe in is promises like "we are legally not allowed to do X". People are legally not allowed to drive faster than the speed limit. People are legally not allowed to launder money. People are legally not allowed to murder each other.

In corporate law, what is legally allowed or not allowed is irrelevant at the end of the day. The only thing that is relevant is how much money is one willing to throw at the problem, which just depends on how much money they expect to make from it.

Ecosia is doing great work! I'm happy they are doing it and I'm rooting for them. But I consider it naive to believe that their intentions will stay good purely on the basis that it would be illegal for them to do otherwise. This is a completely meaningless protection or backstop in my view.

Just look at what Musk and Trump are doing in the US. They get away with bald faced market manipulation, front running, pump & dump schemes and God knows what else. Why? Because they are extremely rich and have a lot of power.

This doesn't mean we should stop doing good things. But we should probably stop pretending that the law is some sort of invincible barrier to misbehavior. It lends very little credence to the robustness of the promise.

> This doesn't mean we should stop doing good things. But we should probably stop pretending that the law is some sort of invincible barrier to misbehavior. It lends very little credence to the robustness of the promise.

So we have common ground. I agree, laws by themselves have no power and they are certainly not an invincible barrier to anything! You need people and the will to uphold them. It requires eternal vigilance. And what I'm saying is that there are people and whole societies, in fact, wanting to and, in fact, upholding laws and the rule of law, e.g. Wirecard.

I may be naive, you may be cynic, that doesn't mean we can't pull on the same string. If you agree with me that the rule of law is desirable and that laws are uphold by people, I'd only ask you to not dismiss laws and the rule of law wholesale, just because there are bad actors and it is not perfect. I guess, that's not what you wanted to do anyway, but it came across as such.

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After looking more into our case of Ecosia I agree, their pledge has little legal binding power so far. As a GmbH they can put out press releases all day and rescind them just as easily. It does not fulfill the specific requirements of an "Auslobung" (a promise to do something), so, yeah, at the moment it's all talk. They may do the walk, but nobody can sue them, if they don't.

A foundation would be different, but also hard to do and not really suited for economic activity, a gGmbH is geared for economic activity in the public interest, which is different again, so they lobby for a new legal form (GmbV) that binds capital as a foundation would but is as easy as a GmbH to set up and run. Like I wrote earlier, there is activity in the legislative to create such a legal form, but Germany being a very thorough representative democracy there are many things to be taken into account and it will take time. Honestly, I'm not really invested in this initiative, so I'll wait and see and wish them all the best.

>Then why have laws in the first place? Seriously, that's just self-defeating cynicism.

I guess that in the spirit of a the previous post, the obvious answer will be something like "having laws is to bind them, the money-less serfs, not to put any hindrance on us the masters and possessors of everything."

This is true but Civil law seems to be bit less "flexible" than Common law.

This isn't a civil law vs common law thing.

It's a US vs sensible countries thing.