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Him saying he's accountable and not actually being held accountable is not really being "accountable".
by polishdude20 4y ago
Him saying he's accountable and not actually being held accountable is not really being "accountable".
- prottog 4y agoWell, he still owns >10% of the company. Accountability when you're a significant owner, not to mention a founder, doesn't just mean that you get fired and sent away from the table.
- ralphmelish 4y agoAnd has >50% of the votes via special shares. He is basically unaccountable.
- valeness 4y agoSo what does it mean?
- jstx1 4y agoHe's losing 10s of billions, that seems like a very real way in which he's being held accountable.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y agoOnce you're worth north of a few hundred million dollars, what practical, concrete, difference does a few billion added - or removed - from one's personal wealth make?
- avidphantasm 4y agoThis is why being a billionaire should be functionally illegal. Tax away all of that wealth. It is immoral that we allow people to control that much wealth. Vast wealth should be under democratic control.
- jstx1 4y agoTax away… all the Meta stock? We’re talking about ownership of assets, not about income. What do we do when we take his stock - do we sell it back on the market crashing the price or do we establish government ownership of every large company? How did you come up with 1 billion as the appropriate number? Do we get to decide that part democratically?
- avidphantasm 4y agoYou are presupposing that Meta should be allowed to exist at its present scale and market share. I am not.
- spiderice 4y agoThen what are you proposing? You didn't answer a single one of GPs questions about the details of what you're proposing. You're just throwing out vague one-liners and expecting everyone else to see how this plan of yours is supposed to work.
- credit_guy 4y ago> It is immoral that we allow people to control that much wealth In my mind, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights. Maybe you don't share this view, but quite a few people do.
- lovich 4y agoIs being a billionaire necessary for any of those or even related? Possibly on the liberty angle but someone controlling that much wealth is decreasing the liberty of everyone else in the economy
- ironman1478 4y agoAnd he'll still have billions. Real accountability would be being removed from his position (which I know isn't possible or at least extremely difficult). He doesn't care about the money, he cares about control.
- davesque 4y agoAnd his lifestyle would change...how exactly? And where do I sign up for that kind of accountability?
- jstx1 4y agoEquating accountability to his lifestyle changing makes no sense to me.
- yamtaddle 4y agoSorta, but I have trouble taking a bad outcome that is "your great-grandchildren still won't have to work for a living, unless you choose to make them" as, like, real consequences. If someone who's already got $10m in the bank would happily trade their success for your "consequences", I dunno, just seems... fake. Like playing poker with quarters—sure you "care" but losing doesn't actually hurt in any meaningful way if your total stakes were $10 or whatever.
- jstx1 4y agoYes, he’s a billionaire and he’ll be fine anyway. Does accountability mean something only if his life is ruined or he loses everything? I don’t get that line of thinking at all.
- piva00 4y agoNot ruin but at least something more tangible to lose than just paying your way out of it. Like losing control of the business, decision making powers, could be anything else that he doesn't have vast resources to plug the hole immediately. Pure financial consequences are meaningless to the ultra-rich.
- yamtaddle 4y agoThis is a good call. Losing, or giving up, something that you can't trivially get back in short order purely by throwing money at it and telling a lackey to go fix it, is an actual consequence. Needing to add together slightly fewer poor countries' GDPs to equal his net worth is meaningless.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI mean, if my waking up to find a flat tire on my car causes a lot more actual harm to my life than his "accountability", seems pretty weak and that's still leaves a lot of room short of "life ruined" or "loses everything". [EDIT] I'm not calling for him to be jailed or something, I'm pointing out that "accountability" that amounts to going from fabulously rich to... still fabulously rich, ain't shit. Hell, part of the motivation for getting rich is precisely that it insulates you from ever experiencing actual harm, so it's entirely expected that this would be the case.
- time_to_smile 4y agoJust like we've seen the word "literally" transform into meaning roughly the same a "figuratively, but very strongly" we'll might see the word "accountable", start to mean "no consequences for me, but I do want people to think I feel bad (but don't worry, I don't)".
- andirk 4y agoWhile I don't agree with the sentiment in this incident, the "accountable" word often means like "I wish I could make this better by doing absolutely nothing".
- justapassenger 4y agoWhat would you consider being held accountable? Sure, resigning is an atomic option, for a CEO, founder, board member and person having controlling amount of votes. Is there anything else that you'd consider as true to that statement?
- ripvanwinkle 4y agoWell he do something meaningful - say pay a full years wages for everyone laid off from his personal funds
- TechBro8615 4y agoYou think he should donate $1,000,000,000+ to the employees his company needs the least?
- ripvanwinkle 4y agowell yes, he brought them in - many if not most were probably just fine in the previous jobs. If he truly feels accountable for what's happening to the people being laid off why shouldn't he.
- TechBro8615 4y agoIt's not like he's depriving them of a job, they can go work somewhere else.
- falcolas 4y agoIf the layoffs are indeed his fault (and not his employees, as he says in his announcements), why not? Call it an "punitive fine" to stop him from making this same mistake.
- karaterobot 4y agoThink of it another way: accountability is answering to someone. As the majority shareholder and CEO, who is Zuckerberg accountable to? Nobody, really. He might say "I am accountable to the billions of Facebook users", but of course that's lip service: try scheduling a meeting with him to review his performance and put him on an improvement plan. He has arranged the company so that he is not accountable to anybody, so him saying he is accountable is either a lie, or a misuse of that term.
- TechBro8615 4y agoIf he does nothing, then eventually none of his employees will have a job.
- falcolas 4y agoBeing accountable could look like taking a hit himself - dropping his pay or stock option grants or a portion of his golden parachute, etc. If this isn't happening, he's not being held accountable.
- twelve40 4y agosure, but nobody forced him to hire 87,000 people in the first place, to work on bullshit projects. That's what he's "holding himself accountable" for. That's a lot of friggin people!!