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>You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, especially in large corporations;

by ue_ 10y ago

>You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, especially in large corporations; in fact, this is the easiest example of "every man for himself". You serve your customers well because ultimately it brings you more profit. Sure, it's not as sure sighted as screwing over every customer, but people who are selfish aren't necessarily stupid. I would argue that the very act of running a business in such a society is not only wrong due to the exploitation of workers, but also the motivation underlying (almost) every transaction in which your goal is to sell things in such a way as to get yourself the largest profit. Of course that doesn't happen in real life. People have moral standards. I think I'm just a cynical ancom with regard to how people would really behave in the absence of all regulation. Let's not forget what large companies can still get away with today, and imagine what it would be like with anti-competitive monopolies, oligarchies, and two or three organisations controlling mainstream information sources. So sure, your business doesn't last long because you were too obviously selfish. Your next plan of action is to pay a news outlet (or better yet, already be in control of one) to cover you. Or if you can't do that, there's still hope - you can band together with like minded people and start another business. Not without worker exploitation, of course. You need all the surplus value you can get. I simply do not have the hope that "serving your customers well" is enough to prevent what actors in a capitalist system are truly capable of doing. Let's not forget the sheer paradoxical nature of "anarcho-capitalism" (the inherent class system set up of the bourgeoisie and proletariat is the exact opposite of non-hierarchical relations). I'm not really a proponent of central planning myself, so I agree with you on that.

justinmk 10y ago
> Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, Right, just like "altruism" is also rooted in self-interest. It turns out that people are motivated by all kinds of things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology
- ue_ 10y ago
  I don't mean to say that everyone acts entirely for themselves, with no action motivated by kindness. I mean to say that in a sytem with multiple people trying to do the same thing you are doing (selling for a profit), you'll have to compete with people with various moral standards and ways of getting their profit. This kind of system, I believe, eventually forces out those who are not "aggressive" enough with their methods, and if not eventually, it will happen over time due to the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns. While admirable in itself to act kindly in a capitalist system, it is ultimately detrimental to the success (and thus survival) of the company. There are of course examples of ethical practices (free range eggs for example), but they only continue once they become sufficiently practical.
  - greggyb 10y ago
    > ...the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns. Capitalism requires private ownership of the means of production. Ever higher and higher returns are a result, so far, of capitalism.
    - danharaj 10y ago
      I guess all those colonial wars and government interventions to build and prop up industries never resulted in higher returns. Capitalism is most certainly not just private ownership of the means of production. That is too reductionist. That is like saying biology is chemistry. Technically true, but misses the point. Because the means of production are held privately there is a class distinction between owners and workers. Owners derive their profit from the labor of their workers. Workers want to work less for higher wages, owners want the opposite. This becomes the locus of class struggle. Because all society now responds to the needs of capital, the superstructure and the state come to serve primarily bourgeois(owners) class interests. Considering how many wars and coups have been fought to forcibly introduce capitalism into other countries and forcibly extract their resources and labor, to say that private ownership results in higher returns is almost offensive in how it elides the emergent dynamics of capitalism.
      - 10y ago
omegaworks 10y ago
>Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest This general tenet starts to break down the fewer competitors operate in the market. Monopolization allows corps to capture supernormal profit and externalize as much cost as possible. When there's only one person that's got what you need, they can treat you how they want. tl;dr: Comcast.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  Well, Comcast's oligopoly is largely established by the fact that rights-of-way and pole-attachment rights are monopolized by municipalities, which tend to approve only a single, or few providers. It's not a natural monopoly.
  - pdonis 10y ago
    > Comcast's oligopoly is largely established by the fact that rights-of-way and pole-attachment rights are monopolized by municipalities, which tend to approve only a single, or few providers. Only because, when municipalities do try to treat bandwidth as a public utility, which they can sell to all providers equally, Comcast and other large ISPs sue them. > It's not a natural monopoly. I agree, but I don't think it is primarily local municipalities that are propping it up.
    - snrplfth 10y ago
      I think it's the structure of rights-of-way, pole-attachments and so forth as monopolies that props it up. The fact that municipalities get sued for trying to sell bandwidth is a problem, but it emerges, I think, because of the fact it's centralized in a government institution.
      - pdonis 10y ago
        To some extent, provisioning for bandwidth is a natural monopoly, for the same reason that provisioning for electrical service, water, sewer, and other utilities are natural monopolies. It doesn't make sense to run multiple different electrical, water, and sewer services to the same neighborhood just so multiple different providers can compete; the costs of all that extra infrastructure are too high. The costs aren't as high for bandwidth, but they aren't zero either. As the size of the "municipality" goes up, though, I agree with you that centralization creates monopolies that are not natural.
pdonis 10y ago
> the motivation underlying (almost) every transaction in which your goal is to sell things in such a way as to get yourself the largest profit And the goal of the buyer is to buy things in such a way as to get himself the largest surplus, i.e., the most value for a given cost. So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish. > People have moral standards. I think I'm just a cynical ancom with regard to how people would really behave in the absence of all regulation. Moral standards existed long before any regulation. We have moral standards because we evolved that way--i.e., because they are adaptive for a species that has to form cooperative relationships in order to survive. Cooperative relationships include economic relationships--specialization and trade. That's how we build wealth. It is true that, as soon as people start building wealth, there is an incentive to plunder it instead of building more. One way of describing a key problem with many (if not most) modern societies is that they are set up to reinforce, or at least not discourage, the incentive to plunder. > Let's not forget what large companies can still get away with today, and imagine what it would be like with anti-competitive monopolies, oligarchies, and two or three organisations controlling mainstream information sources. Um, you're describing what things are like today. And the reason they're like that is, in large part, because one of the things large companies can get away with is buying political power and influence, which they can then use to plunder instead of building wealth. But the reason they can do that at all is that political power and influence can be bought, because it's centralized.
- ue_ 10y ago
  >So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish. I don't disagree with this. But I think that there is more harm that comes from the corporation to the consumer than there is from the consumer to the corporation, or at least more potential harm. And I think that arises out of selfishness that is unfortunately built into the system. >Moral standards existed long before any regulation. I'm sorry; I wasn't trying to make the point that moral standards have anything to do with regulation, but rather that regulation creates a "bare minimum" for the kind of behaviour expected of the participants, regardless of moral views that very much differ from person to person (and of course from sociey to society). I think that a relationship can be cooperative, but with one side being favoured much more than the other - the capitalist who exploits a workforce. Of couse both need to cooperate - but it does not mean that such cooperation is fair. It is often accepted because there aren't fairer alternatives. I wish for a different kind of cooperative relationship, one which I view as more equal and participatory. At the moment, I view it sort of like an EULA.
stale2002 10y ago
I don't think you understand. Yes, they are serving their customers, and they are doing it because it is the selfish, self-optimizing solution. That's the whole point! You have this awesome outcome, where purely selfish people are still doing the "right" thing. You don't need nice people in order for people to do nice things.
- ue_ 10y ago
  > You have this awesome outcome, where purely selfish people are still doing the "right" thing. I don't think it's awesome. Sure, it may not be bad just because of the fact that it is selfish, but I do not think that capitalism produces "awesome", at least compared to theorised alternatives, solutions. In contrast to feudalism, I would agree. I think that motivation not only sets the tone for the current transaction, but it also influences the sort of relationship that builds over time. While not immediately apparent, it has a great effect on the power dynamic of the relationship. This is readily visible in human to human relationships, and I thnk it can be carried over to the relationship between bosses and employees, the bourgeois and proletariat, etc.

by ue_ 10y ago

justinmk 10y ago

> Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, Right, just like "altruism" is also rooted in self-interest. It turns out that people are motivated by all kinds of things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology

ue_ 10y ago
I don't mean to say that everyone acts entirely for themselves, with no action motivated by kindness. I mean to say that in a sytem with multiple people trying to do the same thing you are doing (selling for a profit), you'll have to compete with people with various moral standards and ways of getting their profit. This kind of system, I believe, eventually forces out those who are not "aggressive" enough with their methods, and if not eventually, it will happen over time due to the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns. While admirable in itself to act kindly in a capitalist system, it is ultimately detrimental to the success (and thus survival) of the company. There are of course examples of ethical practices (free range eggs for example), but they only continue once they become sufficiently practical.
- greggyb 10y ago
  > ...the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns. Capitalism requires private ownership of the means of production. Ever higher and higher returns are a result, so far, of capitalism.
  - danharaj 10y ago
    I guess all those colonial wars and government interventions to build and prop up industries never resulted in higher returns. Capitalism is most certainly not just private ownership of the means of production. That is too reductionist. That is like saying biology is chemistry. Technically true, but misses the point. Because the means of production are held privately there is a class distinction between owners and workers. Owners derive their profit from the labor of their workers. Workers want to work less for higher wages, owners want the opposite. This becomes the locus of class struggle. Because all society now responds to the needs of capital, the superstructure and the state come to serve primarily bourgeois(owners) class interests. Considering how many wars and coups have been fought to forcibly introduce capitalism into other countries and forcibly extract their resources and labor, to say that private ownership results in higher returns is almost offensive in how it elides the emergent dynamics of capitalism.
    - 10y ago

omegaworks 10y ago

>Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest This general tenet starts to break down the fewer competitors operate in the market. Monopolization allows corps to capture supernormal profit and externalize as much cost as possible. When there's only one person that's got what you need, they can treat you how they want. tl;dr: Comcast.

snrplfth 10y ago
Well, Comcast's oligopoly is largely established by the fact that rights-of-way and pole-attachment rights are monopolized by municipalities, which tend to approve only a single, or few providers. It's not a natural monopoly.
- pdonis 10y ago
  > Comcast's oligopoly is largely established by the fact that rights-of-way and pole-attachment rights are monopolized by municipalities, which tend to approve only a single, or few providers. Only because, when municipalities do try to treat bandwidth as a public utility, which they can sell to all providers equally, Comcast and other large ISPs sue them. > It's not a natural monopoly. I agree, but I don't think it is primarily local municipalities that are propping it up.
  - snrplfth 10y ago
    I think it's the structure of rights-of-way, pole-attachments and so forth as monopolies that props it up. The fact that municipalities get sued for trying to sell bandwidth is a problem, but it emerges, I think, because of the fact it's centralized in a government institution.
    - pdonis 10y ago
      To some extent, provisioning for bandwidth is a natural monopoly, for the same reason that provisioning for electrical service, water, sewer, and other utilities are natural monopolies. It doesn't make sense to run multiple different electrical, water, and sewer services to the same neighborhood just so multiple different providers can compete; the costs of all that extra infrastructure are too high. The costs aren't as high for bandwidth, but they aren't zero either. As the size of the "municipality" goes up, though, I agree with you that centralization creates monopolies that are not natural.

pdonis 10y ago

> the motivation underlying (almost) every transaction in which your goal is to sell things in such a way as to get yourself the largest profit And the goal of the buyer is to buy things in such a way as to get himself the largest surplus, i.e., the most value for a given cost. So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish. > People have moral standards. I think I'm just a cynical ancom with regard to how people would really behave in the absence of all regulation. Moral standards existed long before any regulation. We have moral standards because we evolved that way--i.e., because they are adaptive for a species that has to form cooperative relationships in order to survive. Cooperative relationships include economic relationships--specialization and trade. That's how we build wealth. It is true that, as soon as people start building wealth, there is an incentive to plunder it instead of building more. One way of describing a key problem with many (if not most) modern societies is that they are set up to reinforce, or at least not discourage, the incentive to plunder. > Let's not forget what large companies can still get away with today, and imagine what it would be like with anti-competitive monopolies, oligarchies, and two or three organisations controlling mainstream information sources. Um, you're describing what things are like today. And the reason they're like that is, in large part, because one of the things large companies can get away with is buying political power and influence, which they can then use to plunder instead of building wealth. But the reason they can do that at all is that political power and influence can be bought, because it's centralized.

ue_ 10y ago
>So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish. I don't disagree with this. But I think that there is more harm that comes from the corporation to the consumer than there is from the consumer to the corporation, or at least more potential harm. And I think that arises out of selfishness that is unfortunately built into the system. >Moral standards existed long before any regulation. I'm sorry; I wasn't trying to make the point that moral standards have anything to do with regulation, but rather that regulation creates a "bare minimum" for the kind of behaviour expected of the participants, regardless of moral views that very much differ from person to person (and of course from sociey to society). I think that a relationship can be cooperative, but with one side being favoured much more than the other - the capitalist who exploits a workforce. Of couse both need to cooperate - but it does not mean that such cooperation is fair. It is often accepted because there aren't fairer alternatives. I wish for a different kind of cooperative relationship, one which I view as more equal and participatory. At the moment, I view it sort of like an EULA.

stale2002 10y ago

I don't think you understand. Yes, they are serving their customers, and they are doing it because it is the selfish, self-optimizing solution. That's the whole point! You have this awesome outcome, where purely selfish people are still doing the "right" thing. You don't need nice people in order for people to do nice things.

ue_ 10y ago
> You have this awesome outcome, where purely selfish people are still doing the "right" thing. I don't think it's awesome. Sure, it may not be bad just because of the fact that it is selfish, but I do not think that capitalism produces "awesome", at least compared to theorised alternatives, solutions. In contrast to feudalism, I would agree. I think that motivation not only sets the tone for the current transaction, but it also influences the sort of relationship that builds over time. While not immediately apparent, it has a great effect on the power dynamic of the relationship. This is readily visible in human to human relationships, and I thnk it can be carried over to the relationship between bosses and employees, the bourgeois and proletariat, etc.