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Concentration of wealth is the price we pay as a society for having a system where we pay people to give us what we want. It's extraordinarily difficult to have

Concentration of wealth is the price we pay as a society for having a system where we pay people to give us what we want. It's extraordinarily difficult to have an Amazon without a Bezos, or a Microsoft without a Gates, or a Walmart without a Walton. This isn't to say that we should ignore concentration of wealth, or that we shouldn't ensure that wealth generation produces positive externalities. Rather, we should remain aware of the tradeoffs we're necessarily making when we tamp down on inequality.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
> It's extraordinarily difficult to have an Amazon without a Bezos, or a Microsoft without a Gates, or a Walmart without a Walton. This presupposes that any of these are desirable.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  For what it's worth, more affordable consumer goods are way more important to the everyday blue-collar folks who tend to not be the readership of this forum. If you're making six figures, you care a lot less about a thirty cents a pound price difference of ground beef, and can afford to care about the concentration and centralization of the retail industry.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    I'm not talking about the desirability of large corporations generally, but about those three particular examples. There are large companies like Costco (though obviously Costco is not targetting blue-collar people as much as say Walmart) that deliver cheaper goods via economies of scale but are organised rather differently from Walmart or Amazon.
    - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
      How do you propose interfering with Walmart's ability to compete aggressively on price without interfering with Costco's?
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        That's pretty easy. Require Walmart to give decent employee benefits. Costco already does that, so that wouldn't hurt them.
- mberning 8y ago
  The world would be an overall much poorer and more brutish place without all of the businesses that have ever drawn feelings of consternation from the public.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    Again, I'm not talking about all of the businesses that have ever etc. But there are certainly corporations whose non-existence would have made the world a much richer and brighter place.
    - mberning 8y ago
      If you are contending that Walmart having never existed would be a net benefit for humanity I think you would have a very hard time proving that. I am not defending their business practices, merely pointing out that it would be extremely hard to fully account for.
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        > If you are contending that Walmart having never existed would be a net benefit for humanity I think you would have a very hard time proving that. I don't really think I have to. It seems like a self-illustrating proof. Walmart drives small businesses out of business by artificially lowering prices for short amounts of time until they've driven competitors out of business. They play dirty tricks employing people at weekly hours that don't require benefits, and so tax-payers end up subsidizing Walmart by being on the hook for the health benefits of many of Walmart's employees. It's welfare for billionaires.
    - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
      These sorts of comments feel to me like they're part of a concerning trend for middle-class and upper-middle-class folks to fail to empathize with the needs of the working-class and below. "The world would be richer and brighter if Walmart never existed" is a value statement on the relative importance of ethical business practices versus being able to buy a pack of ramen noodles for 19 cents versus 40. And the really dangerous part of this trend is when it gets codified into law. It's most obvious in zoning, where often times the kind of quality concessions that are necessary for building cheap housing that is barely acceptable is made illegal. Zoning that excludes single-room occupancy units, minimum road setbacks, lot width minimums, bedroom size minimums, etc - all things necessary for making things that poor people can afford, but a lack of empathy and awareness of affordability side of these tradeoffs makes a naive upper-middle-class person support grossly classist policies.
GoodJokes 8y ago
It isn’t hard to have an amazon without a Bezos. The cult of “genius” that surrounds these people is exactly that. A cult. Self-fulfilling prophecies based on hot air. Don’t tell me this is the price we pay. What a load of specious, but all too common, propaganda.
Retra 8y ago
Seems like we have a military and postal system that are nigh-perfect counterexamples to your point.
claudiawerner 8y ago
>price we pay as a society for having a system where we pay people to give us what we want. This notion of convincing someone to do something for you (even for pay), while it seems very natural and common sense on the surface, actually entails a whole social arrangement which must be penetrated to understand it. The seemingly naive question "why do people work for others?" may have been more obvious in the past - when there were no such things as government safety nets - but now the question has changed and become a lot more interesting... as has the question of why people go above and beyond the call of duty for sometimes no perceptible reward. It turns out this topic is very much related to social psychology and the nature of desire, which is a favourite of philosophers. Frederic Lordon has a great book, Willing Slaves of Capial: Spinoza and Marx on Desire in which he tracks the recent development of capitalism through its stages. Here's a word from the blurb: >To complement Marx's partial answers, especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged, enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a "Spinozist anthropology" that reveals the fundamental role of affects and passions in the employment relationship, reconceptualizing capitalist exploitation as the capture and remoulding of desire.
awakeasleep 8y ago
Why does it seem like every billionaire is exploiting our legal system as much as they're innovating? Bezos exploiting sales tax and workers, oil companies and the Kochs exploiting environmental externalities, Oracles, Microsofts, and Googles exploiting patents to prevent competition. All of these companies consolidating as much as possible to get as close to a monopolistic position as possible, to charge as much 'rent' as they can. All these self made billionaires are using the law, and imperfect or lacking regulation to fuck over millions of people. Sure they're providing a service along with it, but the vast sums of wealth are possible because they poison the earth and steal and fuck over the rest of us while they do it.
- zip1234 8y ago
  It is the plight of rational actors to optimize their position. The government should be focused on making sure that those companies are properly paying for public resources that they use. If they are not, the laws should be changed to make sure that they are. However, the more complicated laws and government get, the easier it is to find loopholes. Anyways, my point is that the billionaires are doing just as any of us do--they just have more tools at their disposal because of the scale of large companies and the complication of the world.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  It's a curse inherent to capitalism. Any incentive to make what people need also works as an incentive to make people need what you make.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

> It's extraordinarily difficult to have an Amazon without a Bezos, or a Microsoft without a Gates, or a Walmart without a Walton. This presupposes that any of these are desirable.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago
For what it's worth, more affordable consumer goods are way more important to the everyday blue-collar folks who tend to not be the readership of this forum. If you're making six figures, you care a lot less about a thirty cents a pound price difference of ground beef, and can afford to care about the concentration and centralization of the retail industry.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  I'm not talking about the desirability of large corporations generally, but about those three particular examples. There are large companies like Costco (though obviously Costco is not targetting blue-collar people as much as say Walmart) that deliver cheaper goods via economies of scale but are organised rather differently from Walmart or Amazon.
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    How do you propose interfering with Walmart's ability to compete aggressively on price without interfering with Costco's?
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      That's pretty easy. Require Walmart to give decent employee benefits. Costco already does that, so that wouldn't hurt them.
mberning 8y ago
The world would be an overall much poorer and more brutish place without all of the businesses that have ever drawn feelings of consternation from the public.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Again, I'm not talking about all of the businesses that have ever etc. But there are certainly corporations whose non-existence would have made the world a much richer and brighter place.
  - mberning 8y ago
    If you are contending that Walmart having never existed would be a net benefit for humanity I think you would have a very hard time proving that. I am not defending their business practices, merely pointing out that it would be extremely hard to fully account for.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      > If you are contending that Walmart having never existed would be a net benefit for humanity I think you would have a very hard time proving that. I don't really think I have to. It seems like a self-illustrating proof. Walmart drives small businesses out of business by artificially lowering prices for short amounts of time until they've driven competitors out of business. They play dirty tricks employing people at weekly hours that don't require benefits, and so tax-payers end up subsidizing Walmart by being on the hook for the health benefits of many of Walmart's employees. It's welfare for billionaires.
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    These sorts of comments feel to me like they're part of a concerning trend for middle-class and upper-middle-class folks to fail to empathize with the needs of the working-class and below. "The world would be richer and brighter if Walmart never existed" is a value statement on the relative importance of ethical business practices versus being able to buy a pack of ramen noodles for 19 cents versus 40. And the really dangerous part of this trend is when it gets codified into law. It's most obvious in zoning, where often times the kind of quality concessions that are necessary for building cheap housing that is barely acceptable is made illegal. Zoning that excludes single-room occupancy units, minimum road setbacks, lot width minimums, bedroom size minimums, etc - all things necessary for making things that poor people can afford, but a lack of empathy and awareness of affordability side of these tradeoffs makes a naive upper-middle-class person support grossly classist policies.

GoodJokes 8y ago

It isn’t hard to have an amazon without a Bezos. The cult of “genius” that surrounds these people is exactly that. A cult. Self-fulfilling prophecies based on hot air. Don’t tell me this is the price we pay. What a load of specious, but all too common, propaganda.

Retra 8y ago

Seems like we have a military and postal system that are nigh-perfect counterexamples to your point.

claudiawerner 8y ago

>price we pay as a society for having a system where we pay people to give us what we want. This notion of convincing someone to do something for you (even for pay), while it seems very natural and common sense on the surface, actually entails a whole social arrangement which must be penetrated to understand it. The seemingly naive question "why do people work for others?" may have been more obvious in the past - when there were no such things as government safety nets - but now the question has changed and become a lot more interesting... as has the question of why people go above and beyond the call of duty for sometimes no perceptible reward. It turns out this topic is very much related to social psychology and the nature of desire, which is a favourite of philosophers. Frederic Lordon has a great book, Willing Slaves of Capial: Spinoza and Marx on Desire in which he tracks the recent development of capitalism through its stages. Here's a word from the blurb: >To complement Marx's partial answers, especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged, enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a "Spinozist anthropology" that reveals the fundamental role of affects and passions in the employment relationship, reconceptualizing capitalist exploitation as the capture and remoulding of desire.

awakeasleep 8y ago

Why does it seem like every billionaire is exploiting our legal system as much as they're innovating? Bezos exploiting sales tax and workers, oil companies and the Kochs exploiting environmental externalities, Oracles, Microsofts, and Googles exploiting patents to prevent competition. All of these companies consolidating as much as possible to get as close to a monopolistic position as possible, to charge as much 'rent' as they can. All these self made billionaires are using the law, and imperfect or lacking regulation to fuck over millions of people. Sure they're providing a service along with it, but the vast sums of wealth are possible because they poison the earth and steal and fuck over the rest of us while they do it.

zip1234 8y ago
It is the plight of rational actors to optimize their position. The government should be focused on making sure that those companies are properly paying for public resources that they use. If they are not, the laws should be changed to make sure that they are. However, the more complicated laws and government get, the easier it is to find loopholes. Anyways, my point is that the billionaires are doing just as any of us do--they just have more tools at their disposal because of the scale of large companies and the complication of the world.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
It's a curse inherent to capitalism. Any incentive to make what people need also works as an incentive to make people need what you make.