4 ms·

> In both of those cases, the blame lies at the feet of the elected officials. Granted, the implication of that is the blame lies at the feet of those who cast

by ardy42 8y ago

> In both of those cases, the blame lies at the feet of the elected officials. Granted, the implication of that is the blame lies at the feet of those who cast the ballots... Blame also lies at the feet of those people and organizations who twist the imperfect rules and governmental systems to suit themselves at the expense of others. To put it another way: all software has bugs, and many of them get exploited. While it might feel just to put all the blame on the software engineer who wrote the code (after all, wasn't he supposed to have done a perfect job?), blame still lies at the feet of those people who chose to exploit the bugs to enrich themselves and/or do harm to others. Hackers are not an impersonal force of nature, they're people who made a choice.

mch82 8y ago
> “all software has bugs... blame still lies at the feet of those people who choose to exploit the bugs...” Nice analogy!
slowmovintarget 8y ago
Except the tax incentives aren't bugs in your analogy to software. They're design choices. The system was given specific characteristics to produce the results that occurred (before Amazon backed out). If the system is so designed, then working in harmony with its design choices is not exploitation. But I'll grant you, I'm just arguing the analogy. The real problem seems to me to be that de Blasio is being a weather vane of sorts. He was a cheerleader for Amazon, doing the work to get them into the city. When that failed and political gain was to be had, he changed his tune to "OMG! I can't believe how evil they are! I'm a victim!" Amazon didn't twist the rules, they played by them (unsuccessfully, as it happens). Nor was this at the expense of others. Whether Amazon got to build a headquarters in NY or not didn't preclude others from doing so. Whether Amazon got tax incentives to go to NY or not, didn't take money away from anyone else. Additional tax revenue that might have been collected is not money that _belongs_ to someone else. It is reasonable to expect moral behavior from individuals. History tells us that corporations almost never display moral behavior. Partly this is because they permit decisions where each person in the corporation may assume that someone else will be moral; a very ordinary human failing. (Forward thinking beyond the framework of advantage for self and company is rare.) Corporations as a whole don't have a conscience. That's why we regulate. That's why we create laws with which the harm corporations might do to people is reduced and minimized so that the benefits corporations can bring may still be realized. Anthropomorphizing corporations is only useful for generating anger, which, in turn, is only useful for political gain. (Discounting First Amendment goggles.) That lands things squarely back on the voter's back in the system here in the U.S. If we go back to your analogy, voters are the ones hiring the designers and not invalidating the contract when the design goes off the rails.

by ardy42 8y ago

mch82 8y ago

> “all software has bugs... blame still lies at the feet of those people who choose to exploit the bugs...” Nice analogy!

slowmovintarget 8y ago

Except the tax incentives aren't bugs in your analogy to software. They're design choices. The system was given specific characteristics to produce the results that occurred (before Amazon backed out). If the system is so designed, then working in harmony with its design choices is not exploitation. But I'll grant you, I'm just arguing the analogy. The real problem seems to me to be that de Blasio is being a weather vane of sorts. He was a cheerleader for Amazon, doing the work to get them into the city. When that failed and political gain was to be had, he changed his tune to "OMG! I can't believe how evil they are! I'm a victim!" Amazon didn't twist the rules, they played by them (unsuccessfully, as it happens). Nor was this at the expense of others. Whether Amazon got to build a headquarters in NY or not didn't preclude others from doing so. Whether Amazon got tax incentives to go to NY or not, didn't take money away from anyone else. Additional tax revenue that might have been collected is not money that _belongs_ to someone else. It is reasonable to expect moral behavior from individuals. History tells us that corporations almost never display moral behavior. Partly this is because they permit decisions where each person in the corporation may assume that someone else will be moral; a very ordinary human failing. (Forward thinking beyond the framework of advantage for self and company is rare.) Corporations as a whole don't have a conscience. That's why we regulate. That's why we create laws with which the harm corporations might do to people is reduced and minimized so that the benefits corporations can bring may still be realized. Anthropomorphizing corporations is only useful for generating anger, which, in turn, is only useful for political gain. (Discounting First Amendment goggles.) That lands things squarely back on the voter's back in the system here in the U.S. If we go back to your analogy, voters are the ones hiring the designers and not invalidating the contract when the design goes off the rails.