5 ms·
You should really relax your moral rigidity. You believe your intuition is correct, but there's nothing saying it is. Our intuition comes from culture, which is
by ironmagma 5y ago
You should really relax your moral rigidity. You believe your intuition is correct, but there's nothing saying it is. Our intuition comes from culture, which is the result of centuries of Judeo-Christian influence, which I hazard to guess most of HN is not OK with taking as a source of knowledge, even an implicit, squishy kind of knowledge.
Instead we should be foundational about this. "Every economist" doesn't believe anything, as there is widespread disagreement about almost every topic in science, and furthermore every economist believing something doesn't make it true, as economists are subject to groupthink same as the rest of us.
To the extent that employees are being taken advantage of by for-profit corporations, employees are accepting of this situation, because alternatives are available. There is nothing that says you must work for a for-profit corporation. There is also nothing that says you can't join a co-op. There are distinct benefits to working for a for-profit corporation; those are what I am choosing when I choose to allow myself to be "fucked over" as you say. In reality, what is happening is I am allowing some of my value to be captured by the organization and invested into its long-term stability, productivity, and desirability. If I wished for none of this, there is nothing stopping me from starting my own company of one person, correct?
- deltaonefour 5y agoYou are bartering your value to the organization and getting less in return. That's the definition of getting fucked. If you want to start your own company then you are fucking other people. In either situation, somebody is getting fucked.
- ironmagma 5y agoYou mean that if I started my own company then I would be “fucking” other companies, since we have a distinction between companies and people.
- deltaonefour 5y agoNo. You'd be fucking your employees.
- ironmagma 5y ago> company of one person In other words, sole proprietor.
- deltaonefour 5y agoMore pedantism. Well if you sell parts of your company to other people, then it's a gang bang. Multiple people fucking the employees. Let's just stop here. It's pointless.
- ironmagma 5y agoIt’s strange you believe any financial transaction including selling shares of a company is inherently a ripoff. A really weird way to view the economy, since price is something that has to be agreed to by all parties. Why would some investor have to buy my company? If they are doing that it’s because they view it as a good deal.
- deltaonefour 5y agoIt's strange that you put words into my mouth. Also don't use the word strange. I see it all the time on HN. "OH it's so strange that you would think... I find it so strange that you seem to be ... " yada yada yada. It's basically a technique to get around the HN rules to insult a person while being polite. It's a complete dick move only used by dicks. Hopefully you made an honest mistake and you're not a dick. When you own a share, if that share increases in intrinsic value with you doing zero additional work to increase that share. Then you just ripped someone off. Someone was doing work to increase that value, but they're not the one benefiting. The person benefiting is the person who invested nothing into increasing the value of the share. Let me illustrate. You buy a 5$ share. You now own something worth 5$. Suddenly the share price increases to 10$. You earned an extra 5$ by sitting on your ass. Who increased the price of that share? Whoever it is, he got fucked. By you. Increasing intrinsic utility is unique only to things related to human capital. This is entirely separate from value increases due to supply and demand.