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> It isn't like people were relying on business then business owners got greedy. Do you actually believe that? That all these business owners were running thei

by lovich 5y ago

> It isn't like people were relying on business then business owners got greedy. Do you actually believe that? That all these business owners were running their factories out of the goodness of their hearts and that they only stopped because the government took all the money they had to give out as charity? If that is the case why do we see ultra profitable businesses returning to this form instead of trying to carve out any section of their work base that they can, ex. The FAANGs turning most job positions into contractor filled roles like the janitorial staff?

ravitation 5y ago
There is this contemporary absurd narrative that businesses, business owners, and/or corporations only recently became greedy, and that this development (of greed), not the system itself, is the root of essentially all the problems with the modern economic system. I think it is quite possible that you were more likely to find a benevolent feudal lord (partially because incentives were more directly, and forcibly, aligned) than find a corporation willing to put profits as anything other than first.
- lovich 5y ago
  I’m frankly boggled that this thought is even entertained. We have literal centuries of evidence of corporations oppressing their workers and other peoples in the pursuit of profits, down to actual armies killing striking workers. I agree with you that you’d be more likely to find a benevolent feudal lord as they at least viewed their serfs as theirs and not some sort of cogs to be thrown away once they were worn out.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    I'm not sure you are being clear in your argument. If we have literal centuries of evidence of corporations oppressing their workers [up to and including] actual armies killing striking workers ... how do you think it is possible that they've become more greedy recently? Business greed has capped out since approximately the first 48 hours after the establishment of the first business back in Mesopotamia or wherever. Possibly you haven't taken a literal enough read of what is being said here, but businesses don't ever get "more greedy". The greed capped out centuries ago. It cannot increase. It is impossible for it to get worse. It is at the human limit, and has been basically forever. It is like the madness of people who think inflation is because businessesmen suddenly got extra greedy. If they could raise prices to that level they'd have done it in 22AD, not 2022AD. Prices are always as high as businesses can charge, if they go up something that isn't greed has to have changed. We can argue about what.
    - nebulous_two 5y ago
      You're right it's not greed itself, but the scale of its target that has grown. One person losing their job to corporate greed is a tragedy, and 10000 people losing their jobs is a statistic.
    - Frost1x 5y ago
      I think both lines of thought are correct and aren't mutually exclusive. Systemically, we have a fundamental underlying issue where profit motive isn't always aligned with the rest of society and there in lies what we see now. I also think greed, or perhaps better described as flaunted greedy behavior, has increased over the past several decades. While capitalism has of course always been greed driven, different periods of time and different cultures have set guardrails up as to what level of greedy behavior is and isn't acceptable. In the US the culture during the prime time of the industrial revolution, capitalism had technology progress propping its greedy appetite up. Those gains have been largely consumed and greed shifted over more and more towards optimizing on labor. We live in an environment now where we no longer assume your employer has your interests at heart and everyone listens to HR and leadership propoganda selling pictures of families and care for their employees while everyone rolls their eyes. We assume our employer will try the pay the least for us and get us to do the most for the least. We assume that they'll replace us the second they have a quantifiable cheaper alternative. Many decades ago these practices weren't as accepted, they certainly occurred, but they came with bad image and cultural rejection that harmed businesses. That isn't the case anymore. Businesses can basically do whatever isn't explicitly restricted by law or more profitable than penalties law sets and its just the accepted state of affairs. After all, it's legal, what are you going to do? Meanwhile through aggressive lobbying businesses are basically writing the law as they see fit.
    - ericd 5y ago
      Also let’s talk about how investors just discovered housing as an asset class and are buying up all the houses.
    - lovich 5y ago
      > Possibly you haven't taken a literal enough read of what is being said here, but businesses don't ever get "more greedy". The greed capped out centuries ago. It cannot increase. It is impossible for it to get worse. It is at the human limit, and has been basically forever. I don’t agree with this premise, at least not in the context of the United States. You can even see in recent history where the greed amplified in the 80’s with the phrase “greed is good” becoming popular or that myth about how businesses have a legal requirement to pursue profit over everything got into the American psyche after that case against Henry Ford. Fuck, charging interest on loans used to be considered a sin in western culture. We explicitly have seen greed change in magnitude.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Being charitable / good to employees is good for business and for retaining workforce in a world where employees don't have anyone else to care for them. If I need to give 40% of my profits (and your salary) to the government and there is an avenue for getting some of that money back when you're in trouble, then go and ask for the government for help. The mistake is in allowing the government to gather more resources and in turn making people dependant on them. Welfare also destroyed the family unit (especially in the black community). Indirect democracy is a fancy name for "electing" with your 1/100M vote an elite which gets to decide how to spend half of your salary.
- lovich 5y ago
  > Welfare also destroyed the family unit (especially in the black community). All I needed to read to dismiss this
  - aperson_hello 5y ago
    It's pretty clear that it did...on paper... Didn't actually destroy anything in practice other than the formalization of that unit
    - lovich 5y ago
      If it is pretty clear that it did then you’ll have no problem finding sources that can prove that it occurred, that also take into account the targeted imprisonment that the black community has/had faced since emancipation. Anyone who looks at the black community in the US being destabilized and blames _welfare_ as the cause while ignoring that the legal system imprisons black men at a higher rate than white men regardless of the incident rate of crime is ignorant at best
      - kbenson 5y ago
        I read the comment you're replying to as saying it didn't actually destroy anything, it's just easy to infer that from what's visible in records (e.g. statistics). "Didn't actually destroy anything in practice" pretty clearly puts it as against the idea that it destroyed anything though, to my eyes.

by lovich 5y ago

ravitation 5y ago

There is this contemporary absurd narrative that businesses, business owners, and/or corporations only recently became greedy, and that this development (of greed), not the system itself, is the root of essentially all the problems with the modern economic system. I think it is quite possible that you were more likely to find a benevolent feudal lord (partially because incentives were more directly, and forcibly, aligned) than find a corporation willing to put profits as anything other than first.

lovich 5y ago
I’m frankly boggled that this thought is even entertained. We have literal centuries of evidence of corporations oppressing their workers and other peoples in the pursuit of profits, down to actual armies killing striking workers. I agree with you that you’d be more likely to find a benevolent feudal lord as they at least viewed their serfs as theirs and not some sort of cogs to be thrown away once they were worn out.
- roenxi 5y ago
  I'm not sure you are being clear in your argument. If we have literal centuries of evidence of corporations oppressing their workers [up to and including] actual armies killing striking workers ... how do you think it is possible that they've become more greedy recently? Business greed has capped out since approximately the first 48 hours after the establishment of the first business back in Mesopotamia or wherever. Possibly you haven't taken a literal enough read of what is being said here, but businesses don't ever get "more greedy". The greed capped out centuries ago. It cannot increase. It is impossible for it to get worse. It is at the human limit, and has been basically forever. It is like the madness of people who think inflation is because businessesmen suddenly got extra greedy. If they could raise prices to that level they'd have done it in 22AD, not 2022AD. Prices are always as high as businesses can charge, if they go up something that isn't greed has to have changed. We can argue about what.
  - nebulous_two 5y ago
    You're right it's not greed itself, but the scale of its target that has grown. One person losing their job to corporate greed is a tragedy, and 10000 people losing their jobs is a statistic.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    I think both lines of thought are correct and aren't mutually exclusive. Systemically, we have a fundamental underlying issue where profit motive isn't always aligned with the rest of society and there in lies what we see now. I also think greed, or perhaps better described as flaunted greedy behavior, has increased over the past several decades. While capitalism has of course always been greed driven, different periods of time and different cultures have set guardrails up as to what level of greedy behavior is and isn't acceptable. In the US the culture during the prime time of the industrial revolution, capitalism had technology progress propping its greedy appetite up. Those gains have been largely consumed and greed shifted over more and more towards optimizing on labor. We live in an environment now where we no longer assume your employer has your interests at heart and everyone listens to HR and leadership propoganda selling pictures of families and care for their employees while everyone rolls their eyes. We assume our employer will try the pay the least for us and get us to do the most for the least. We assume that they'll replace us the second they have a quantifiable cheaper alternative. Many decades ago these practices weren't as accepted, they certainly occurred, but they came with bad image and cultural rejection that harmed businesses. That isn't the case anymore. Businesses can basically do whatever isn't explicitly restricted by law or more profitable than penalties law sets and its just the accepted state of affairs. After all, it's legal, what are you going to do? Meanwhile through aggressive lobbying businesses are basically writing the law as they see fit.
  - ericd 5y ago
    Also let’s talk about how investors just discovered housing as an asset class and are buying up all the houses.
  - lovich 5y ago
    > Possibly you haven't taken a literal enough read of what is being said here, but businesses don't ever get "more greedy". The greed capped out centuries ago. It cannot increase. It is impossible for it to get worse. It is at the human limit, and has been basically forever. I don’t agree with this premise, at least not in the context of the United States. You can even see in recent history where the greed amplified in the 80’s with the phrase “greed is good” becoming popular or that myth about how businesses have a legal requirement to pursue profit over everything got into the American psyche after that case against Henry Ford. Fuck, charging interest on loans used to be considered a sin in western culture. We explicitly have seen greed change in magnitude.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

Being charitable / good to employees is good for business and for retaining workforce in a world where employees don't have anyone else to care for them. If I need to give 40% of my profits (and your salary) to the government and there is an avenue for getting some of that money back when you're in trouble, then go and ask for the government for help. The mistake is in allowing the government to gather more resources and in turn making people dependant on them. Welfare also destroyed the family unit (especially in the black community). Indirect democracy is a fancy name for "electing" with your 1/100M vote an elite which gets to decide how to spend half of your salary.

lovich 5y ago
> Welfare also destroyed the family unit (especially in the black community). All I needed to read to dismiss this
- aperson_hello 5y ago
  It's pretty clear that it did...on paper... Didn't actually destroy anything in practice other than the formalization of that unit
  - lovich 5y ago
    If it is pretty clear that it did then you’ll have no problem finding sources that can prove that it occurred, that also take into account the targeted imprisonment that the black community has/had faced since emancipation. Anyone who looks at the black community in the US being destabilized and blames _welfare_ as the cause while ignoring that the legal system imprisons black men at a higher rate than white men regardless of the incident rate of crime is ignorant at best
    - kbenson 5y ago
      I read the comment you're replying to as saying it didn't actually destroy anything, it's just easy to infer that from what's visible in records (e.g. statistics). "Didn't actually destroy anything in practice" pretty clearly puts it as against the idea that it destroyed anything though, to my eyes.