7 ms·

It's almost like we are blackmailed into doing the wrong things all the time (on different levels of "importance"). The fact is that this is a distinct feature

It's almost like we are blackmailed into doing the wrong things all the time (on different levels of "importance"). The fact is that this is a distinct feature of our society, we have to "earn our living" or be left behind. Do we really want to keep such a negative incentive in place?

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
"A married man with a family will do anything for money" - Talleyrand
cduzz 6y ago
This is the basic nature of a modern American corporation where the culture of the leadership implicitly believes there is a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to generate a profit. There is a self-selecting process where people promote other people who make those small decisions in a particular way. If you climb well or are unlucky enough to look under the wrong rocks you get to an inflection point where your option is to become a whistle blower, leave, ask for a promotion, or become the patsy. Often you can avoid this (if that's your desire) by frequently and vocally asking about the audit requirements of a particular business process...
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  It runs deeper than that. Basic human nature throughout history has been to demonstrate loyalty to those giving you your livelihood. Up to and including fighting wars and providing resources to war fighters, and supporting them when they committed what we today would consider war crimes. Progress as a species can be looked at as a progression from more violent ways to organize to less violent ways, and corporations are less violent than what they came from, royal charters. Whistleblowing is and will always be considered an act of treason, or direct disloyalty, against those who are expecting you to support the enterprise.
- AniseAbyss 6y ago
  Thats our business culture. You don't really get rewarded for doing the RIGHT THING. Hell your stock options will go down if you do the whistle blower thing. You don't get punished for NOT doing the right thing. Precious few CEOs and CFOs in jail. Ultimately it comes down to your own conscience and being able to sleep at night.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  It goes beyond profit motive. Independent of any business concerns, there's a lot of cultural value placed on optimism, and on appearing competent and confident. Which means that there can be great personal shame in saying things like, "I don't know," or, "This might not work out." There's constant pressure to smile, look on the bright side, and, at all costs, avoid doing something that might earn you a reputation as a debbie downer. I think that's actually a much bigger factor in some of these situations than any profit motive. Profit motive doesn't push rational people to keep doubling down no matter what; there is room for risk management concerns. But a corporation is not a single mind, it's a bunch of individuals acting in their own interest. Individuals' concern for their social capital within their teams tends to be a much more immediate and pressing motive than relatively remote and abstract things like shareholder profit.
irjustin 6y ago
I mean I don't disagree with you on principle, but you're almost asking to remove money altogether or any important limited resource. That's what ultimately makes our society turn. If we could get to a true StarTrek replicator, then I think we're off to a good start!
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  No need to abolish money, it would be enough to guarantee housing, food, education and healthcare to everyone. Just remove the conditions for people to be blackmailed/taken advantage of.
  - mdpopescu 6y ago
    Your name hints that you had that, just as I had. It didn't work out so well anywhere it was tried, but I'm sure the next time will be different. /sarc
    - pietrovismara 6y ago
      If you refer to the communist dictatorship in Romania, well that didn't work out, but to say it failed because of the will to guarantee the basic needs to everyone, that would be a gross misconception. Regarding Italy: We have social housing that is crippled by bureocracy and corruption, you have to wait years in line to get a flat, so I can't really say we guarantee that. We guarantee education, but we couldn't guarantee the same (good) level of education to everyone yet. Also we don't guarantee post high school education. If you need to work because you're poor and you don't have time to pursue a degree, that's mostly your problem. Food is not guaranteed either, although we have several monetary aids to partially reduce the issue. Healthcare is guaranteed, and excluding waiting times that are a bit long, I can say that healthcare really worked well for us. Nothing is perfect, but nobody is left to die because of preventable disease. No matter how poor you are, you will be treated. So I wouldn't say in Italy we ever experienced what I propose, just a tiny taste of it.
      - 6y ago
beardedwizard 6y ago
We are always free to chose between cowardice and heroism. If you aren't sure you would blow the whistle to save actual human lives you may want to reassess priorities and realities.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >We are always free to chose between cowardice and heroism. If you aren't sure you would blow the whistle to save actual human lives you may want to reassess priorities and realities. Seems like you're trying to say something in a roundabout way. These tropes make for easy internet virtue points but "just shun all risk" is a terrible heuristic for decision making and it's rarely clear without hindsight if/when/to what extent the risks are meaningfully greater than some previously agreed upon acceptable level. (Challenger blew up because the decision makers didn't understand how risky things actually were during a normal low temperature launch and decided to cut things even closer) If everyone in the supply chain padded their estimates to reduce risk and cover their ass we wouldn't have space flight.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  > We are always free to chose I heard this sentence so many times, that by now I'm convinced people who believe we are free don't really know what freedom means. Today, you are free to choose in the same sense that you are free to commit crime. You can kill the next random person you meet on the streets, you can do that as long as you're ready to pay the consequences. Does that mean we have freedom to commit homicide? For the same reason, we aren't free to choose between keeping a job or starving our family and ending under the bridge. Especially in a corrupt economy that relies entirely on people being in debt to live under modern standards. Abolish debt, guarantee the basic needs to everyone, then we can talk about freedom of leaving a job.
  - beardedwizard 6y ago
    That's an interesting zero sum game. The reality does not match, but it's a convenient excuse to never face a lack of moral character. You can quit and find a new job. Most would do it in a heartbeat for a tiny change in total comp, but struggle to make the decision when lives matter but might come at an economic cost? That seems problematic and extremely self serving. An interesting insight into the tech industry and its lack of 1. moral character 2. engineer accountability in general.
hinkley 6y ago
Advertisers tell us all day every day that a living should cost us much more than Maslow’s hierarchy would dictate. And so we mortgage our agency every time we believe them. Advertising was part of the military industrial complex during world war 2. Maybe we should take umbrage at that.
wing-_-nuts 6y ago
>It's almost like we are blackmailed into doing the wrong things all the time (on different levels of "importance"). This right here is one of the main reasons why I've worked so hard to achieve financial independence. Every time someone in my life has told me that I have to do something I'm uncomfortable with, 'or else', they've simply been trying to cover the fact that I'm being exploited. Every. Time. I'm quite happy to have reached a place in my life where I can tell someone 'No' with whatever level of politeness they deserve.

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago

"A married man with a family will do anything for money" - Talleyrand

cduzz 6y ago

This is the basic nature of a modern American corporation where the culture of the leadership implicitly believes there is a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to generate a profit. There is a self-selecting process where people promote other people who make those small decisions in a particular way. If you climb well or are unlucky enough to look under the wrong rocks you get to an inflection point where your option is to become a whistle blower, leave, ask for a promotion, or become the patsy. Often you can avoid this (if that's your desire) by frequently and vocally asking about the audit requirements of a particular business process...

vinceguidry 6y ago
It runs deeper than that. Basic human nature throughout history has been to demonstrate loyalty to those giving you your livelihood. Up to and including fighting wars and providing resources to war fighters, and supporting them when they committed what we today would consider war crimes. Progress as a species can be looked at as a progression from more violent ways to organize to less violent ways, and corporations are less violent than what they came from, royal charters. Whistleblowing is and will always be considered an act of treason, or direct disloyalty, against those who are expecting you to support the enterprise.
AniseAbyss 6y ago
Thats our business culture. You don't really get rewarded for doing the RIGHT THING. Hell your stock options will go down if you do the whistle blower thing. You don't get punished for NOT doing the right thing. Precious few CEOs and CFOs in jail. Ultimately it comes down to your own conscience and being able to sleep at night.
mumblemumble 6y ago
It goes beyond profit motive. Independent of any business concerns, there's a lot of cultural value placed on optimism, and on appearing competent and confident. Which means that there can be great personal shame in saying things like, "I don't know," or, "This might not work out." There's constant pressure to smile, look on the bright side, and, at all costs, avoid doing something that might earn you a reputation as a debbie downer. I think that's actually a much bigger factor in some of these situations than any profit motive. Profit motive doesn't push rational people to keep doubling down no matter what; there is room for risk management concerns. But a corporation is not a single mind, it's a bunch of individuals acting in their own interest. Individuals' concern for their social capital within their teams tends to be a much more immediate and pressing motive than relatively remote and abstract things like shareholder profit.

irjustin 6y ago

I mean I don't disagree with you on principle, but you're almost asking to remove money altogether or any important limited resource. That's what ultimately makes our society turn. If we could get to a true StarTrek replicator, then I think we're off to a good start!

pietrovismara 6y ago
No need to abolish money, it would be enough to guarantee housing, food, education and healthcare to everyone. Just remove the conditions for people to be blackmailed/taken advantage of.
- mdpopescu 6y ago
  Your name hints that you had that, just as I had. It didn't work out so well anywhere it was tried, but I'm sure the next time will be different. /sarc
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    If you refer to the communist dictatorship in Romania, well that didn't work out, but to say it failed because of the will to guarantee the basic needs to everyone, that would be a gross misconception. Regarding Italy: We have social housing that is crippled by bureocracy and corruption, you have to wait years in line to get a flat, so I can't really say we guarantee that. We guarantee education, but we couldn't guarantee the same (good) level of education to everyone yet. Also we don't guarantee post high school education. If you need to work because you're poor and you don't have time to pursue a degree, that's mostly your problem. Food is not guaranteed either, although we have several monetary aids to partially reduce the issue. Healthcare is guaranteed, and excluding waiting times that are a bit long, I can say that healthcare really worked well for us. Nothing is perfect, but nobody is left to die because of preventable disease. No matter how poor you are, you will be treated. So I wouldn't say in Italy we ever experienced what I propose, just a tiny taste of it.
    - 6y ago

beardedwizard 6y ago

We are always free to chose between cowardice and heroism. If you aren't sure you would blow the whistle to save actual human lives you may want to reassess priorities and realities.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>We are always free to chose between cowardice and heroism. If you aren't sure you would blow the whistle to save actual human lives you may want to reassess priorities and realities. Seems like you're trying to say something in a roundabout way. These tropes make for easy internet virtue points but "just shun all risk" is a terrible heuristic for decision making and it's rarely clear without hindsight if/when/to what extent the risks are meaningfully greater than some previously agreed upon acceptable level. (Challenger blew up because the decision makers didn't understand how risky things actually were during a normal low temperature launch and decided to cut things even closer) If everyone in the supply chain padded their estimates to reduce risk and cover their ass we wouldn't have space flight.
pietrovismara 6y ago
> We are always free to chose I heard this sentence so many times, that by now I'm convinced people who believe we are free don't really know what freedom means. Today, you are free to choose in the same sense that you are free to commit crime. You can kill the next random person you meet on the streets, you can do that as long as you're ready to pay the consequences. Does that mean we have freedom to commit homicide? For the same reason, we aren't free to choose between keeping a job or starving our family and ending under the bridge. Especially in a corrupt economy that relies entirely on people being in debt to live under modern standards. Abolish debt, guarantee the basic needs to everyone, then we can talk about freedom of leaving a job.
- beardedwizard 6y ago
  That's an interesting zero sum game. The reality does not match, but it's a convenient excuse to never face a lack of moral character. You can quit and find a new job. Most would do it in a heartbeat for a tiny change in total comp, but struggle to make the decision when lives matter but might come at an economic cost? That seems problematic and extremely self serving. An interesting insight into the tech industry and its lack of 1. moral character 2. engineer accountability in general.

hinkley 6y ago

Advertisers tell us all day every day that a living should cost us much more than Maslow’s hierarchy would dictate. And so we mortgage our agency every time we believe them. Advertising was part of the military industrial complex during world war 2. Maybe we should take umbrage at that.

wing-_-nuts 6y ago

>It's almost like we are blackmailed into doing the wrong things all the time (on different levels of "importance"). This right here is one of the main reasons why I've worked so hard to achieve financial independence. Every time someone in my life has told me that I have to do something I'm uncomfortable with, 'or else', they've simply been trying to cover the fact that I'm being exploited. Every. Time. I'm quite happy to have reached a place in my life where I can tell someone 'No' with whatever level of politeness they deserve.