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> We need to applaud companies like Slack, but know that the nitty-gritty of human services—housing, health care, social support—which lots of nonprofits and pu

> We need to applaud companies like Slack, but know that the nitty-gritty of human services—housing, health care, social support—which lots of nonprofits and public institutions are working on, the private sector has largely turned away from.” I mean, yeah? Those things sound like they’re precisely the kind of stuff that’s the domain of non-profits and the government. Why would we expect Slack or other tech companies to be helping random people with housing or social support? The private sector does help here, indirectly, with taxes that go to support such programs. And it’s the government that sets the tax rate and decides where revenue goes, not the private sector. You can blame the government, or the people who voted them in, but blaming Slack and co. is silly. It’s not their job, and it shouldn’t be: you don’t want the institutions with profit motive to be the ones handling charitable works. That’s part of the whole reason we have a government.

AlexanderDhoore 7y ago
You live in Munich. You think like a European. Left or right on the political spectrum, doesn't matter. What you said is generally accepted as "how it works" in Europe. Not so much in other places.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is an excellent history of how government policy was co-opted by white supremacists in America.
  - mynameishere 7y ago
    That would certainly explain mass immigration, affirmative action, hate crime laws, and endless wars for Israel. White supremacists being in charge.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  I'm from the states, grew up Mormon, and have lived in Alabama and Utah, in addition to other regions. I'm very aware of how the American mindset works, thanks.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Government is to govern. Government in most countries is driven by democratic mandates. Democratic mandates are set by influencers. The US’ key influencers are largely regressive and dishonest - and convince people to either not vote - or to vote against their personal best interests[1]. The US government does not currently have a democratic mandate to operate as the social welfare state. Consequently hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people are immorally (by my own standards) disadvantaged and with no means or realistic opportunity to better themselves. So if a private company (or shareholders-forbid: a publicly traded company)’s leadership feels a moral obligation to help those left behind by the state - more power to them. Until the US truly embraces the “for the people” part of the “by the people, of the people, for the people” part of their unofficial motto it really is up to private entities to make-up the difference. [1] UPDATE: To clarify - I don't mean that I somehow know what's in someone else's best interests - because I don't - nor their exact reasons for voting for a particular party or candidate - but I mean that it's still possible to _objectively_ say that many people vote for ideological or sentimental reasons that appeal to them (which is part of democracy!) with - or without - having done (for example) a spreadsheet comparisons of how each candidate's manifesto politics would affect their cost of living, quality of living, economic expectations, and so on. I can respect someone voting against their interests for ideological or moral reasons - provided it's done with informed consent. I'm not convinced that most- or even a plurality - of GOP voters in recent US elections sat down and made a spreadsheet and said "yup - I'm okay with rising the cost of my individual health insurance provided it means I have the choice to refuse healthcare coverage" (and that is not a misrepresentation of the ACA and its opponents' stated positions). So by all means - vote against your own interests - provided you do it with informed consent - otherwise you _really_ are voting against your own interests.
- jtbayly 7y ago
  > convince people to either not vote - or to vote against their personal best interests. I’ve seen this on HN several times, and it always cracks me up. The condescension isn't dripping. It’s running in torrents. You think the reason they won’t vote the way you want is because they don’t know what’s good for themselves. You might want to consider an alternate: they don’t want someone like you deciding what’s good for them and forcing it down their throats.
pytester 7y ago
>Why would we expect Slack or other tech companies to be helping random people with housing or social support? Yet they expect congratulations. Slack's selfish commercial interest is entirely aligned with hiring cheap developers, but, they put out a press release and the atlantic magazine took it up. I worked with a another charity that did a similar thing (not prisoners, but the underprivileged) and one of the companies we got some of them jobs at did the same thing. The company got some cheap developers, avoided commission on a recruitment agency and then proceeded to issue a press release patting themselves on the back.
- tyingq 7y ago
  In this particular case, I think it's worth it even it is self serving. The advent of cheap online background checks has added to the already difficult task of getting a job if you're a felon. Any publicity around hiring them helps normalize it as expected.
  - pytester 7y ago
    This piece of PR fluff isn't helping regular ex cons get regular jobs in non-tight labor markets.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      If you look at what funded the article, at the bottom, I believe that's the intent. Though, yes, they did over gush about Slack.
  - robsinatra 7y ago
    I'm waiting for the moral grandstanders to take to social media and try to publicly shame companies for refusing to hire their trained ex-cons
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  They're playing the PR game and winning. I find it hard to blame them for that. Especially since they're not lying or doing anything explicitly harmful.
syshum 7y ago
>>You can blame the government, I dont blame government, as it is not and should not be the governments role to do this. >Those things sound like they’re precisely the kind of stuff that’s the domain of non-profits and the government. Non-Profits yes, government no Government sole and only job should be to preserve and protect the rights of citizens. Expanding government beyond this role has always lead to disaster and human suffering > you don’t want the institutions with profit motive to be the ones handling charitable works While true in some sense, HN's continual hostility to profit is absurd. Profit motive is what leads innovation, what makes things cheaper, and what allows charity to feed 100 people with a $100-200 donation... Profit Motive is what has brought the massive reduction in poverty world wide... It was not government, it was Free markets that did this
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  Profit motive isn't bad. It just doesn't interface well with charity.
- forgetfulusr 7y ago
  I don't find the hostility to profit absurd. Profit motive also filled the world with crap we don't need. It also accelerated climate change. Through our fossil fuel companies' profit motive. I actually find HN lacking in hostility towards profit, but it seems it's because we selectively choose what to pick up on and remember.
- harimau777 7y ago
  Throughout the vast majority of human history the role of government has not been just to preserve and protect rights, but also to promote the public good. This is true both of national government and more informal governments such as those in churches and clubs. I think that humanity is a species that operates and survives as a society; therefore, I think its likely that there is a place for society promoting the common good. I agree with you that completely abandoning profit motive would be a very bad idea. However, any process can become harmful if it is allowed to run without limits or safeguards. During the time that poverty has been reduced worldwide we have had both profit motive and the government operating; therefore, I don't think it is reasonable to conclude that profit motive would bring prosperity without also having government to constrain it.
golemotron 7y ago
> I mean, yeah? Those things sound like they’re precisely the kind of stuff that’s the domain of non-profits and the government. Why would we expect Slack or other tech companies to be helping random people with housing or social support? The economy is becoming more competitive in the upper 20%. This translates into heightened signaling around social issues for those in that bracket [1]. It's not a bad thing, and people do have their hearts in the right place, but the underlying status anxiety is real and it is an economic effect. [1] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-wa...
Braggadocious 7y ago
You're effectively describing trickle-down economics. "Help out rich people so they pay more taxes which will trickle down to poor people" That's not a real thing. The economy is trickle-up. Income inequality is widening. San francisco has the worst income inequality of any city in a developed country: top 1% earn 44x more than bottom 99%. The number of home owners has actually decreased in the last ten years. Cost of living have increased in line with what the top 1% are making. The recession hurt low income far more than the top and yet we subsidized the shit out of the top by giving tax breaks to tech and wallstreet. We basically created a drag race between a ferrari and a civic, gave the ferrari a head start, and then sat around waiting for the civic to catch up.
- jbay808 7y ago
  I don't think that is the OP's point at all. They aren't saying the tax rate should be low, they're saying that the social safety net should be handled by the government and charities rather than for-profit businesses.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  I'm a social democrat. My point is that we shouldn't be dependent on the whims of private companies feeling charitable or not. If society needs money from them, then that's what taxes are for.
  - Braggadocious 7y ago
    There is no separation between corporations from government.
dahart 7y ago
> blaming Slack and co. is silly. It’s not their job, and it shouldn’t be: you don’t want the institutions with profit motive to be the ones handling charitable works. I’d agree with what you said because the reason you gave seems strong & compelling to me; the idea that profit motive might corrupt charity if in charge. On the other hand, I dislike the idea that only government should “handle” social responsibility. (I think what we’re talking about is responsibility, not charity.) And in fact, today there are laws requiring social responsibility of the private sector, so in a very real sense it actually is their job. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibil... The kind of thinking that separates the people & companies making money from helping our social outcasts, or just giving back to society in general, is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to having more social outcasts and growing income inequality. When rich people argue they should have no responsibility to pay taxes into social programs, what we end up with is more people who need social programs. Why shouldn’t it be everyone’s job to handle social improvement, including all the companies profiting from the environment that makes their profits possible? > it’s the government that sets the tax rate and decides where revenue goes, not the private sector. While that might be technically accurate, it seems misleading to frame it this way. The private sector has such massive influence on tax policy, it doesn’t even make sense to suggest the government does it and the private sector doesn’t. Lots of laws are effectively written by and for private companies, enough so that we have a serious problem with it and a name for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  CSR is fine and good when you're talking about behaving in an ethical manner in the course of their business. But there isn't really any reason to want Slack and co in charge of solving housing or health care. It's not their responsibility, it's not their expertise. Expecting every single company to be randomly contributing to a dozen different societal problems outside the scope of their business is a recipe for scatterbrained failure. Like, what even would Slack be expected to do here for housing or health care? Slack can't change zoning regulations. They can't force hospitals to provide price transparency. Why expect them to do something, rather than just take their money and have the government do something with it, when the government has vastly more authority to act?
andrepd 7y ago
>The private sector does help here, indirectly, with taxes that go to support such programs. Hah. That would be the idea yes, but we all know how much corporations like paying their tax.
barrkel 7y ago
Long term vs short term incentives. It's in companies' interests to have a healthy economy with employed workers, with families bringing up the next generation, etc. But that's a very long term perspective relative to the stock market, which would much rather see lower taxes and higher work force participation for the next few quarters. People voting for public policies are only a little bit better; old people vote for their benefits, middle age people vote against taxes, and young people vote for redistribution when they're aware enough to turn up.
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. Those blow up into generic ideological flamewars, which are always the same and always less interesting than the specific discussion that they destroy by burning as kindling. With your comment, you provoked a flamewar that degenerated straight to bon mots like "Government is to govern.", "I’ve seen this on HN several times, and it always cracks me up. The condescension isn't dripping. It’s running in torrents." and "American Christians say that Jesus Christ is the only true way and that Islam is a false path". It swelled to over a hundred comments, completely dominating the page. Worse, it was sitting at the top when I saw it, crowding out all the discussion that curious readers and commenters are here for. That's not cool; that's the way a community like this destroys itself. Tire fires like this are why the site guidelines explicitly ask: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20black%20hole&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  With respect, it was directly related to a quote in the article. It wasn't my intent to provoke a flame war; I was addressing what I felt was faulty reasoning used by someone in the article. I understand where you're coming from, but I'm honestly not sure how much of the article -- or articles in general -- I could bring up without it potentially counting as an 'ideological tangent', as that seems like an awfully broad and ambiguous label. Just about everything is ideological to somebody. I also don't see what about my comment exactly counts as flamebait. I wasn't overly abrasive, I didn't say anything particularly outrageous or extreme. It was a political sort of point, yes, but "how do we, as a society, help former criminals integrate back into society" is kind of inherently political, I think.
  - dang 7y ago

AlexanderDhoore 7y ago

You live in Munich. You think like a European. Left or right on the political spectrum, doesn't matter. What you said is generally accepted as "how it works" in Europe. Not so much in other places.

wayoutthere 7y ago
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is an excellent history of how government policy was co-opted by white supremacists in America.
- mynameishere 7y ago
  That would certainly explain mass immigration, affirmative action, hate crime laws, and endless wars for Israel. White supremacists being in charge.
TulliusCicero 7y ago
I'm from the states, grew up Mormon, and have lived in Alabama and Utah, in addition to other regions. I'm very aware of how the American mindset works, thanks.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

Government is to govern. Government in most countries is driven by democratic mandates. Democratic mandates are set by influencers. The US’ key influencers are largely regressive and dishonest - and convince people to either not vote - or to vote against their personal best interests[1]. The US government does not currently have a democratic mandate to operate as the social welfare state. Consequently hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people are immorally (by my own standards) disadvantaged and with no means or realistic opportunity to better themselves. So if a private company (or shareholders-forbid: a publicly traded company)’s leadership feels a moral obligation to help those left behind by the state - more power to them. Until the US truly embraces the “for the people” part of the “by the people, of the people, for the people” part of their unofficial motto it really is up to private entities to make-up the difference. [1] UPDATE: To clarify - I don't mean that I somehow know what's in someone else's best interests - because I don't - nor their exact reasons for voting for a particular party or candidate - but I mean that it's still possible to _objectively_ say that many people vote for ideological or sentimental reasons that appeal to them (which is part of democracy!) with - or without - having done (for example) a spreadsheet comparisons of how each candidate's manifesto politics would affect their cost of living, quality of living, economic expectations, and so on. I can respect someone voting against their interests for ideological or moral reasons - provided it's done with informed consent. I'm not convinced that most- or even a plurality - of GOP voters in recent US elections sat down and made a spreadsheet and said "yup - I'm okay with rising the cost of my individual health insurance provided it means I have the choice to refuse healthcare coverage" (and that is not a misrepresentation of the ACA and its opponents' stated positions). So by all means - vote against your own interests - provided you do it with informed consent - otherwise you _really_ are voting against your own interests.

jtbayly 7y ago
> convince people to either not vote - or to vote against their personal best interests. I’ve seen this on HN several times, and it always cracks me up. The condescension isn't dripping. It’s running in torrents. You think the reason they won’t vote the way you want is because they don’t know what’s good for themselves. You might want to consider an alternate: they don’t want someone like you deciding what’s good for them and forcing it down their throats.

pytester 7y ago

>Why would we expect Slack or other tech companies to be helping random people with housing or social support? Yet they expect congratulations. Slack's selfish commercial interest is entirely aligned with hiring cheap developers, but, they put out a press release and the atlantic magazine took it up. I worked with a another charity that did a similar thing (not prisoners, but the underprivileged) and one of the companies we got some of them jobs at did the same thing. The company got some cheap developers, avoided commission on a recruitment agency and then proceeded to issue a press release patting themselves on the back.

tyingq 7y ago
In this particular case, I think it's worth it even it is self serving. The advent of cheap online background checks has added to the already difficult task of getting a job if you're a felon. Any publicity around hiring them helps normalize it as expected.
- pytester 7y ago
  This piece of PR fluff isn't helping regular ex cons get regular jobs in non-tight labor markets.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    If you look at what funded the article, at the bottom, I believe that's the intent. Though, yes, they did over gush about Slack.
- robsinatra 7y ago
  I'm waiting for the moral grandstanders to take to social media and try to publicly shame companies for refusing to hire their trained ex-cons
TulliusCicero 7y ago
They're playing the PR game and winning. I find it hard to blame them for that. Especially since they're not lying or doing anything explicitly harmful.

syshum 7y ago

>>You can blame the government, I dont blame government, as it is not and should not be the governments role to do this. >Those things sound like they’re precisely the kind of stuff that’s the domain of non-profits and the government. Non-Profits yes, government no Government sole and only job should be to preserve and protect the rights of citizens. Expanding government beyond this role has always lead to disaster and human suffering > you don’t want the institutions with profit motive to be the ones handling charitable works While true in some sense, HN's continual hostility to profit is absurd. Profit motive is what leads innovation, what makes things cheaper, and what allows charity to feed 100 people with a $100-200 donation... Profit Motive is what has brought the massive reduction in poverty world wide... It was not government, it was Free markets that did this

TulliusCicero 7y ago
Profit motive isn't bad. It just doesn't interface well with charity.
forgetfulusr 7y ago
I don't find the hostility to profit absurd. Profit motive also filled the world with crap we don't need. It also accelerated climate change. Through our fossil fuel companies' profit motive. I actually find HN lacking in hostility towards profit, but it seems it's because we selectively choose what to pick up on and remember.
harimau777 7y ago
Throughout the vast majority of human history the role of government has not been just to preserve and protect rights, but also to promote the public good. This is true both of national government and more informal governments such as those in churches and clubs. I think that humanity is a species that operates and survives as a society; therefore, I think its likely that there is a place for society promoting the common good. I agree with you that completely abandoning profit motive would be a very bad idea. However, any process can become harmful if it is allowed to run without limits or safeguards. During the time that poverty has been reduced worldwide we have had both profit motive and the government operating; therefore, I don't think it is reasonable to conclude that profit motive would bring prosperity without also having government to constrain it.

golemotron 7y ago

> I mean, yeah? Those things sound like they’re precisely the kind of stuff that’s the domain of non-profits and the government. Why would we expect Slack or other tech companies to be helping random people with housing or social support? The economy is becoming more competitive in the upper 20%. This translates into heightened signaling around social issues for those in that bracket [1]. It's not a bad thing, and people do have their hearts in the right place, but the underlying status anxiety is real and it is an economic effect. [1] https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-wa...

Braggadocious 7y ago

You're effectively describing trickle-down economics. "Help out rich people so they pay more taxes which will trickle down to poor people" That's not a real thing. The economy is trickle-up. Income inequality is widening. San francisco has the worst income inequality of any city in a developed country: top 1% earn 44x more than bottom 99%. The number of home owners has actually decreased in the last ten years. Cost of living have increased in line with what the top 1% are making. The recession hurt low income far more than the top and yet we subsidized the shit out of the top by giving tax breaks to tech and wallstreet. We basically created a drag race between a ferrari and a civic, gave the ferrari a head start, and then sat around waiting for the civic to catch up.

jbay808 7y ago
I don't think that is the OP's point at all. They aren't saying the tax rate should be low, they're saying that the social safety net should be handled by the government and charities rather than for-profit businesses.
TulliusCicero 7y ago
I'm a social democrat. My point is that we shouldn't be dependent on the whims of private companies feeling charitable or not. If society needs money from them, then that's what taxes are for.
- Braggadocious 7y ago
  There is no separation between corporations from government.

dahart 7y ago

> blaming Slack and co. is silly. It’s not their job, and it shouldn’t be: you don’t want the institutions with profit motive to be the ones handling charitable works. I’d agree with what you said because the reason you gave seems strong & compelling to me; the idea that profit motive might corrupt charity if in charge. On the other hand, I dislike the idea that only government should “handle” social responsibility. (I think what we’re talking about is responsibility, not charity.) And in fact, today there are laws requiring social responsibility of the private sector, so in a very real sense it actually is their job. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibil... The kind of thinking that separates the people & companies making money from helping our social outcasts, or just giving back to society in general, is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to having more social outcasts and growing income inequality. When rich people argue they should have no responsibility to pay taxes into social programs, what we end up with is more people who need social programs. Why shouldn’t it be everyone’s job to handle social improvement, including all the companies profiting from the environment that makes their profits possible? > it’s the government that sets the tax rate and decides where revenue goes, not the private sector. While that might be technically accurate, it seems misleading to frame it this way. The private sector has such massive influence on tax policy, it doesn’t even make sense to suggest the government does it and the private sector doesn’t. Lots of laws are effectively written by and for private companies, enough so that we have a serious problem with it and a name for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

TulliusCicero 7y ago
CSR is fine and good when you're talking about behaving in an ethical manner in the course of their business. But there isn't really any reason to want Slack and co in charge of solving housing or health care. It's not their responsibility, it's not their expertise. Expecting every single company to be randomly contributing to a dozen different societal problems outside the scope of their business is a recipe for scatterbrained failure. Like, what even would Slack be expected to do here for housing or health care? Slack can't change zoning regulations. They can't force hospitals to provide price transparency. Why expect them to do something, rather than just take their money and have the government do something with it, when the government has vastly more authority to act?

andrepd 7y ago

>The private sector does help here, indirectly, with taxes that go to support such programs. Hah. That would be the idea yes, but we all know how much corporations like paying their tax.

barrkel 7y ago

Long term vs short term incentives. It's in companies' interests to have a healthy economy with employed workers, with families bringing up the next generation, etc. But that's a very long term perspective relative to the stock market, which would much rather see lower taxes and higher work force participation for the next few quarters. People voting for public policies are only a little bit better; old people vote for their benefits, middle age people vote against taxes, and young people vote for redistribution when they're aware enough to turn up.

dang 7y ago

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. Those blow up into generic ideological flamewars, which are always the same and always less interesting than the specific discussion that they destroy by burning as kindling. With your comment, you provoked a flamewar that degenerated straight to bon mots like "Government is to govern.", "I’ve seen this on HN several times, and it always cracks me up. The condescension isn't dripping. It’s running in torrents." and "American Christians say that Jesus Christ is the only true way and that Islam is a false path". It swelled to over a hundred comments, completely dominating the page. Worse, it was sitting at the top when I saw it, crowding out all the discussion that curious readers and commenters are here for. That's not cool; that's the way a community like this destroys itself. Tire fires like this are why the site guidelines explicitly ask: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20black%20hole&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

TulliusCicero 7y ago
With respect, it was directly related to a quote in the article. It wasn't my intent to provoke a flame war; I was addressing what I felt was faulty reasoning used by someone in the article. I understand where you're coming from, but I'm honestly not sure how much of the article -- or articles in general -- I could bring up without it potentially counting as an 'ideological tangent', as that seems like an awfully broad and ambiguous label. Just about everything is ideological to somebody. I also don't see what about my comment exactly counts as flamebait. I wasn't overly abrasive, I didn't say anything particularly outrageous or extreme. It was a political sort of point, yes, but "how do we, as a society, help former criminals integrate back into society" is kind of inherently political, I think.
- dang 7y ago