7 ms·

Yes, social responsibility is a bitch for the individual businessman. Boo hoo hoo. But for society as a whole, these things are good. Long maternity (and pater

Yes, social responsibility is a bitch for the individual businessman. Boo hoo hoo. But for society as a whole, these things are good. Long maternity (and paternity!) leave is good for the children that will one day grow up and become productive members of society. Having laws around parental leave preventing discrimination means that society doesn't have to deal with paying unemployment welfare for women around 30, and having a hard time re-integrating them into the workforce at 40. Instead this cost is spread out among all the companies in the form of employment laws. I understand that all businesses wish to have a workforce consisting only of young well-educated males that are never sick, never take vacations and work lots of overtime, but there's a cost to getting that, and almost all businesses forget, or refuse to understand the value society provides to them. You want a workforce? Sure, it's gonna cost you, both in corporate taxes, and in social responsibility by employing less desireable individuals. Tough shit, pay up.

itmag 15y ago
Why can't social responsibility be handled at a different layer, though? Why is it the individual businessman who has to pay special taxes for things like that? Why not just take it from general taxes across the board? Here in Sweden, employing people can be a crippling move for small businesses.
- phillmv 15y ago
  >Why not just take it from general taxes across the board? Politics. Most people don't see or hear about payroll taxes, but they would notice if you added 5% to their income taxes. Plus, in a lot of cases it's administratively easier to say "the funding for this social program comes directly from this source of taxation". You're right that taxes should be designed better; in a lot of cases they provide disincentives for a lot of beneficial behaviour. Taxes are just really hard to design correctly. It's a huge problem no one has control over.
  - itmag 15y ago
    This leads to an interesting digression... My hacker's mind sees society the same way it sees ie software layers, kernels, APIs, libraries, etc. And from that POV, current society practices seem very inefficient and disorganized, and could be improved readily with a dollop of hacker values (eg lazy but smart) and cold hard logic. One example: I am becoming more and more in favor of a minimum guaranteed income provided by society. Here are some good arguments in favor of that: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-income/ http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc... Of course a MGI is heresy in today's society because we are still in a mindset where it's crucial that everyone pull their own weight lest other people suffer - a lingering meme from the days when 90% of the population was occupied with food production. This of course ignores the notions that 1) society is insanely productive thanks to automation and it requires very little labor to pay for the true necessities of life (see for instance http://www.earlyretirementextreme.com http://www.earlyretirementextreme.com - he lives on $7k a year) 2) many jobs today are marginally useful at best - think paper-shuffling mid-management 3) most of our income goes toward consumerist escapism which fails at making us truly fulfilled 4) much of the economy just exists to satisfy society's need for a status stratification mechanism (eg one is considered middle-class because one has such-and-such job title and education - if this classification went away then there would be general status confusion). Then again, trying to fix society the same way one re-factors code may be hubris on my part...
    - zhemao 15y ago
      In order to afford such a plan, governments would have to impose really high taxes. That would be a much bigger disincentive to production than the safety net itself.
      - itmag 15y ago
        The government (at least in Sweden) already imposes really high taxes. And people here are still generally wealthy as fuck (relative to most of the world) and able to use a large chunk of their income for beer, trendy clothes, smartphones, restaurants, travel, etc (ie nice-to-have luxury goods). It's all a matter of perspective IMHO. Of course, I'm generally leary of "solutions" that come out of the gov't but that's another story...
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  What do you think is more effective and cheaper? Legislate against discriminating against females of a certain age and punish companies that violate it, or increase the corporate tax with x%, have Skatteverket collect it, and politicians to re-distribute it in such a way as to provide jobs for females around 30?
andorjakab 15y ago
It would be very easy to promote the employment of the elderly, the handicapped, whoever every normal person in the world wishes to help. The state should make it cheaper for me to employ them. It's that easy. Instead, they create regulations that harm those, who they aim to protect.
_dps 15y ago
I think a demand that businesses undertake some social responsibility is sensible, given the privileges corporations receive (like limited liability). I think many people overlook that corporations are granted real privileges beyond those granted to individual citizens. But I'd point out that, if one makes social responsibility particularly onerous on individual businesses, "You want a workforce? ... pay up" may reach equilibrium not by people paying up but by fewer and fewer wanting a workforce. Then everyone is poorer. At the end of the day, businesses are started and run by people. Pro-little-guy positions like "tough shit, pay up" are aggressive stances not just against abstract legal entities but also against often-well-meaning individuals who aspire to offer products and services. Even people strongly aligned with European social democratic values agree that the government can't do everything, so if you want locally produced products and services you have to ensure that the conditions are suitable for people to do that. Yet, somehow I don't think we'd feel the same sort of emotional satisfaction from "You want jobs? Tough shit, stop voting for policies that make it hard to offer them."
- deadsy 15y ago
  >given the privileges corporations receive (like limited liability) Corporations don't receive limited liability. The owners of a corporation have limited liability.
  - _dps 15y ago
    Yes, sorry that's indeed an important distinction but I don't think it changes the substance of my comment; the people who form corporations to do business receive privileges. Also, it's not just the owners; employees acting as agents are typically protected by the corporate veil, so it's not just a fat-cat capitalist protection. This is important for, say, employees managing hazardous waste that may be spilled (through employee negligence) into public land. Or imagine who would be willing to be employed as an aircraft designer if their individual errors could lead to personal legal liability for crashes.
    - rprasad 15y ago
      Also, it's not just the owners; employees acting as agents are typically protected by the corporate veil, That's not true at all. The corporate veil exists solely to protect investors' investment in a corporate entity. It does not extend to any other persons. Employees can and have been held civilly and criminally liable for their negligence.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Instead this cost is spread out among all the companies in the form of employment laws. No, it's spread out among all the companies that are willing to hire women. The companies that discriminate against women have a competitive advantage over those that don't. (Note that under normal circumstances, discrimination is a competitive disadvantage. If I hated Indians, for example, I'd never have found my current team.)
- kenjackson 15y ago
  This assumes that there are a sufficient supply of men who can perform better than women.
  - reinhardt 15y ago
    No, this assumes that there are not many women (or men for that matter) whose hyper-productivity can make up for a 2-3 year leave of absence.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      Not quite, because not every woman will vanish from work for 2-3 years. Such laws make an employer indifferent between a man of quality Q and a woman of quality Q + P(taking leave) x (cost of leave). Whether or not hyper-productivity is required depends strongly on P(taking leave) and the cost of leave.
      - myko 15y ago
        One other thing to note is that a lot of businesses are now granting paternity leave equal or near so to maternity leave.
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  Only in countries where there aren't any laws to even this out. Where I live, there's plenty of laws that stop companies from discriminating against women, thereby removing the competitive advantage, which in turn forces the companies to do the right thing.
kfcm 15y ago
"Social responsibility" is a scam to part productive people from their hard-earned money and give it to the leeches of society who sit on their asses waiting for the next reality tv episode. If a woman wants to have kids, that's fine. Don't ask me to pay for her decision; that's her husband's responsibility. Oh wait. She's an unwed mother, and the father can't be found? Then she made a piss-poor decision in not keeping the proverbial "gate closed", and should be the one dealing with the repercussions of it. Not me, my business, my employees, or my customers. As for long maternity/paternity leaves being good for children...in what way? Does it teach children a solid work ethic? Or does it teach them they are entitled to copious amounts of time off at other people's expense? "Social responsibility" is just another term for theft, pure and simple.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  The point is that the "social responsibility" produces a better overall society in the cases of the poor unwed mother you describe. The idea is that we all benefit. Those kids don't grow up in isolation and if they turn out to be bad/uneducated/criminal people, everyone else in society is affected. You say it's a scam, but if so, who manufactured the scam? Are you telling me that those in power got together and decided to build a system which punishes the hardworking and rewards the lazy? Since when do people join a conspiracy to help others and hurt themselves? You also make gross generalizations in describing the people that benefit from social programs. It's repulsive.
  - amorphid 15y ago
    Being an mother (or father?) is not traditionally a career choice. If the state wants to set up a formal program for people to get paid to have children, it should do that. A system that gives a financial incentive to having children can and will be abused.
    - brown9-2 15y ago
      What incentive is given in systems like Hungary's? Are you saying that such lengthy parental leave is an incentive to produce babies? This would seem to ignore all of the other impacts of having a child on your money and time.
jfresh13 15y ago
Totally disagree. Whats worse for society is a lack of jobs and miserable people that would bring up miserable kids. If you've ever been an employer you would be able to relate, grow up.
fauigerzigerk 15y ago
As long as the takeup of parental leave among men is as low as it is in most places (outside of Scandinavia), current laws are simply sexist. Women are not protected as much as they are stigmatised. The cost is not spread around much at all. The entire burden is on women who are discriminated against because they cost more to employ and on small businesses that cannot shift jobs around as easily as big corporations can. My preferred solution would be to exempt small business (those with less than 20 employees) and don't grant any parental leave or benefits unless both parents take equal leave (Obviously single parents have to be exempt).
walkon 15y ago
Way to miss the point of the post. This person won't hire anyone because it is too expensive to run a company with employees. The point is, Hungary has created an environment that greatly threatens the profitability, and therefore, sustainability of private companies. If the company doesn't exist, no oneis hired.
- anothermachine 15y ago
  If laws would really require him to pay employees more than himself, he could offer partnerships instead of trying to exploit employees.
  - TDL 15y ago
    Hiring people is now the equivalent of exploiting them?
  - taskstrike 15y ago
    "Exploit employees" suggests that by profiting from other's time that you paid for is wrong. You are forgetting that the business owner also takes on risk with his investment in employees while employees has a steady income with no risk. To the partnership answer, a lot of people don't want to take risks in general. This is true even in the US where people are way more entrepreneurial than other countries.
forza 15y ago
I don't have much sympathy for companies who doesn't invest in their employees. If you value your employees and are in it for the long run, then your biggest problem are employees leaving you not the opposite. Otherwise you are free to hire consultants and pay a premium to the agency and (hopefully) the consultant, but don't be surprised when they leave you in six months for something better (paid). Also fresh graduates or self educated people are loyal and relatively cheap (especially in Sweden). But then you would of course have to invest in them.
jerf 15y ago
"But for society as a whole, these things are good." Then why not triple the existing benefits? Why not multiply them by 10 even? If it's an unalloyed good, then why are we being so stingy with the good stuff? If you account for only one side of the ledger, you can make anything look good. (Or bad.) Unfortunately, reality checks both sides. Wrapping it in a social justice narrative may make it easier to obscure the ledger to other humans but it doesn't fool reality for one Plank instant.
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  It is, as with almost everything in life, a balance. It might be the case that the balance in Hungary is off as the author of the article claims, but that claim was buried in a one-sided rant against the cost of accessing the labour pool. The point of my post was to even the scales, to remind everyone that it costs a lot of money to employ people, because creating employable people costs a lot of money. The CS college graduates we want to interview as potential employees of our dot-com startups don't materialize out of thin air. As cheesy as it sounds, previous generations invested in their future; we have to do the same.
  - jerf 15y ago
    He did talk about a balance, a very important one. He compared the cost of an employee to the value it can bring him as an employer. A business simply can not hire when the cost of an employee exceeds the benefits, and if it can't make do without employees, it will simply go out of business. It doesn't matter at that point how much it cost to "create employable people" (itself a terribly loaded formulation, but moving on), because society has priced itself right out of the market, apparently. Something a lot of people seem to forget is that if you want to use businesses as a piggy bank to fund social ambitions, you have to let some money actually flow into the piggy bank. It is not simply a given that money will be there.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  > "Then why not triple the existing benefits? Why not multiply them by 10 even? If it's an unalloyed good, then why are we being so stingy with the good stuff?" What an absurd, and incredibly disingenuous thing to say. Water's good for you - in fact if you don't have it you die. So let's throw you in a huge pool and see how you like it! Stop putting words in OP's mouth, and argue against his argument instead of twisting it into an easy straw man.

itmag 15y ago

Why can't social responsibility be handled at a different layer, though? Why is it the individual businessman who has to pay special taxes for things like that? Why not just take it from general taxes across the board? Here in Sweden, employing people can be a crippling move for small businesses.

phillmv 15y ago
>Why not just take it from general taxes across the board? Politics. Most people don't see or hear about payroll taxes, but they would notice if you added 5% to their income taxes. Plus, in a lot of cases it's administratively easier to say "the funding for this social program comes directly from this source of taxation". You're right that taxes should be designed better; in a lot of cases they provide disincentives for a lot of beneficial behaviour. Taxes are just really hard to design correctly. It's a huge problem no one has control over.
- itmag 15y ago
  This leads to an interesting digression... My hacker's mind sees society the same way it sees ie software layers, kernels, APIs, libraries, etc. And from that POV, current society practices seem very inefficient and disorganized, and could be improved readily with a dollop of hacker values (eg lazy but smart) and cold hard logic. One example: I am becoming more and more in favor of a minimum guaranteed income provided by society. Here are some good arguments in favor of that: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-income/ http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc... Of course a MGI is heresy in today's society because we are still in a mindset where it's crucial that everyone pull their own weight lest other people suffer - a lingering meme from the days when 90% of the population was occupied with food production. This of course ignores the notions that 1) society is insanely productive thanks to automation and it requires very little labor to pay for the true necessities of life (see for instance http://www.earlyretirementextreme.com http://www.earlyretirementextreme.com - he lives on $7k a year) 2) many jobs today are marginally useful at best - think paper-shuffling mid-management 3) most of our income goes toward consumerist escapism which fails at making us truly fulfilled 4) much of the economy just exists to satisfy society's need for a status stratification mechanism (eg one is considered middle-class because one has such-and-such job title and education - if this classification went away then there would be general status confusion). Then again, trying to fix society the same way one re-factors code may be hubris on my part...
  - zhemao 15y ago
    In order to afford such a plan, governments would have to impose really high taxes. That would be a much bigger disincentive to production than the safety net itself.
    - itmag 15y ago
      The government (at least in Sweden) already imposes really high taxes. And people here are still generally wealthy as fuck (relative to most of the world) and able to use a large chunk of their income for beer, trendy clothes, smartphones, restaurants, travel, etc (ie nice-to-have luxury goods). It's all a matter of perspective IMHO. Of course, I'm generally leary of "solutions" that come out of the gov't but that's another story...
henrikschroder 15y ago
What do you think is more effective and cheaper? Legislate against discriminating against females of a certain age and punish companies that violate it, or increase the corporate tax with x%, have Skatteverket collect it, and politicians to re-distribute it in such a way as to provide jobs for females around 30?

andorjakab 15y ago

It would be very easy to promote the employment of the elderly, the handicapped, whoever every normal person in the world wishes to help. The state should make it cheaper for me to employ them. It's that easy. Instead, they create regulations that harm those, who they aim to protect.

_dps 15y ago

I think a demand that businesses undertake some social responsibility is sensible, given the privileges corporations receive (like limited liability). I think many people overlook that corporations are granted real privileges beyond those granted to individual citizens. But I'd point out that, if one makes social responsibility particularly onerous on individual businesses, "You want a workforce? ... pay up" may reach equilibrium not by people paying up but by fewer and fewer wanting a workforce. Then everyone is poorer. At the end of the day, businesses are started and run by people. Pro-little-guy positions like "tough shit, pay up" are aggressive stances not just against abstract legal entities but also against often-well-meaning individuals who aspire to offer products and services. Even people strongly aligned with European social democratic values agree that the government can't do everything, so if you want locally produced products and services you have to ensure that the conditions are suitable for people to do that. Yet, somehow I don't think we'd feel the same sort of emotional satisfaction from "You want jobs? Tough shit, stop voting for policies that make it hard to offer them."

deadsy 15y ago
>given the privileges corporations receive (like limited liability) Corporations don't receive limited liability. The owners of a corporation have limited liability.
- _dps 15y ago
  Yes, sorry that's indeed an important distinction but I don't think it changes the substance of my comment; the people who form corporations to do business receive privileges. Also, it's not just the owners; employees acting as agents are typically protected by the corporate veil, so it's not just a fat-cat capitalist protection. This is important for, say, employees managing hazardous waste that may be spilled (through employee negligence) into public land. Or imagine who would be willing to be employed as an aircraft designer if their individual errors could lead to personal legal liability for crashes.
  - rprasad 15y ago
    Also, it's not just the owners; employees acting as agents are typically protected by the corporate veil, That's not true at all. The corporate veil exists solely to protect investors' investment in a corporate entity. It does not extend to any other persons. Employees can and have been held civilly and criminally liable for their negligence.

yummyfajitas 15y ago

Instead this cost is spread out among all the companies in the form of employment laws. No, it's spread out among all the companies that are willing to hire women. The companies that discriminate against women have a competitive advantage over those that don't. (Note that under normal circumstances, discrimination is a competitive disadvantage. If I hated Indians, for example, I'd never have found my current team.)

kenjackson 15y ago
This assumes that there are a sufficient supply of men who can perform better than women.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  No, this assumes that there are not many women (or men for that matter) whose hyper-productivity can make up for a 2-3 year leave of absence.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    Not quite, because not every woman will vanish from work for 2-3 years. Such laws make an employer indifferent between a man of quality Q and a woman of quality Q + P(taking leave) x (cost of leave). Whether or not hyper-productivity is required depends strongly on P(taking leave) and the cost of leave.
    - myko 15y ago
      One other thing to note is that a lot of businesses are now granting paternity leave equal or near so to maternity leave.
henrikschroder 15y ago
Only in countries where there aren't any laws to even this out. Where I live, there's plenty of laws that stop companies from discriminating against women, thereby removing the competitive advantage, which in turn forces the companies to do the right thing.

kfcm 15y ago

"Social responsibility" is a scam to part productive people from their hard-earned money and give it to the leeches of society who sit on their asses waiting for the next reality tv episode. If a woman wants to have kids, that's fine. Don't ask me to pay for her decision; that's her husband's responsibility. Oh wait. She's an unwed mother, and the father can't be found? Then she made a piss-poor decision in not keeping the proverbial "gate closed", and should be the one dealing with the repercussions of it. Not me, my business, my employees, or my customers. As for long maternity/paternity leaves being good for children...in what way? Does it teach children a solid work ethic? Or does it teach them they are entitled to copious amounts of time off at other people's expense? "Social responsibility" is just another term for theft, pure and simple.

brown9-2 15y ago
The point is that the "social responsibility" produces a better overall society in the cases of the poor unwed mother you describe. The idea is that we all benefit. Those kids don't grow up in isolation and if they turn out to be bad/uneducated/criminal people, everyone else in society is affected. You say it's a scam, but if so, who manufactured the scam? Are you telling me that those in power got together and decided to build a system which punishes the hardworking and rewards the lazy? Since when do people join a conspiracy to help others and hurt themselves? You also make gross generalizations in describing the people that benefit from social programs. It's repulsive.
- amorphid 15y ago
  Being an mother (or father?) is not traditionally a career choice. If the state wants to set up a formal program for people to get paid to have children, it should do that. A system that gives a financial incentive to having children can and will be abused.
  - brown9-2 15y ago
    What incentive is given in systems like Hungary's? Are you saying that such lengthy parental leave is an incentive to produce babies? This would seem to ignore all of the other impacts of having a child on your money and time.

jfresh13 15y ago

Totally disagree. Whats worse for society is a lack of jobs and miserable people that would bring up miserable kids. If you've ever been an employer you would be able to relate, grow up.

fauigerzigerk 15y ago

As long as the takeup of parental leave among men is as low as it is in most places (outside of Scandinavia), current laws are simply sexist. Women are not protected as much as they are stigmatised. The cost is not spread around much at all. The entire burden is on women who are discriminated against because they cost more to employ and on small businesses that cannot shift jobs around as easily as big corporations can. My preferred solution would be to exempt small business (those with less than 20 employees) and don't grant any parental leave or benefits unless both parents take equal leave (Obviously single parents have to be exempt).

walkon 15y ago

Way to miss the point of the post. This person won't hire anyone because it is too expensive to run a company with employees. The point is, Hungary has created an environment that greatly threatens the profitability, and therefore, sustainability of private companies. If the company doesn't exist, no oneis hired.

anothermachine 15y ago
If laws would really require him to pay employees more than himself, he could offer partnerships instead of trying to exploit employees.
- TDL 15y ago
  Hiring people is now the equivalent of exploiting them?
- taskstrike 15y ago
  "Exploit employees" suggests that by profiting from other's time that you paid for is wrong. You are forgetting that the business owner also takes on risk with his investment in employees while employees has a steady income with no risk. To the partnership answer, a lot of people don't want to take risks in general. This is true even in the US where people are way more entrepreneurial than other countries.

forza 15y ago

I don't have much sympathy for companies who doesn't invest in their employees. If you value your employees and are in it for the long run, then your biggest problem are employees leaving you not the opposite. Otherwise you are free to hire consultants and pay a premium to the agency and (hopefully) the consultant, but don't be surprised when they leave you in six months for something better (paid). Also fresh graduates or self educated people are loyal and relatively cheap (especially in Sweden). But then you would of course have to invest in them.

jerf 15y ago

"But for society as a whole, these things are good." Then why not triple the existing benefits? Why not multiply them by 10 even? If it's an unalloyed good, then why are we being so stingy with the good stuff? If you account for only one side of the ledger, you can make anything look good. (Or bad.) Unfortunately, reality checks both sides. Wrapping it in a social justice narrative may make it easier to obscure the ledger to other humans but it doesn't fool reality for one Plank instant.

henrikschroder 15y ago
It is, as with almost everything in life, a balance. It might be the case that the balance in Hungary is off as the author of the article claims, but that claim was buried in a one-sided rant against the cost of accessing the labour pool. The point of my post was to even the scales, to remind everyone that it costs a lot of money to employ people, because creating employable people costs a lot of money. The CS college graduates we want to interview as potential employees of our dot-com startups don't materialize out of thin air. As cheesy as it sounds, previous generations invested in their future; we have to do the same.
- jerf 15y ago
  He did talk about a balance, a very important one. He compared the cost of an employee to the value it can bring him as an employer. A business simply can not hire when the cost of an employee exceeds the benefits, and if it can't make do without employees, it will simply go out of business. It doesn't matter at that point how much it cost to "create employable people" (itself a terribly loaded formulation, but moving on), because society has priced itself right out of the market, apparently. Something a lot of people seem to forget is that if you want to use businesses as a piggy bank to fund social ambitions, you have to let some money actually flow into the piggy bank. It is not simply a given that money will be there.
potatolicious 15y ago
> "Then why not triple the existing benefits? Why not multiply them by 10 even? If it's an unalloyed good, then why are we being so stingy with the good stuff?" What an absurd, and incredibly disingenuous thing to say. Water's good for you - in fact if you don't have it you die. So let's throw you in a huge pool and see how you like it! Stop putting words in OP's mouth, and argue against his argument instead of twisting it into an easy straw man.