17 ms·

1. You own a company. 2. Your company produces something hugely useful / beneficial for society; in other words, it produces something hugely valuable. 3. You

1. You own a company. 2. Your company produces something hugely useful / beneficial for society; in other words, it produces something hugely valuable. 3. Your company is therefore valuable, making you super wealthy. Which part of the above is unethical?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fallingknife 4y ago
Envy is a hell of a drug
sli 4y ago
This is very reductive and #2 is immediately a large leap.
- fastball 4y ago
  A large leap in what way? That companies have a hard time producing useful things, or that those useful things are valuable?
wwweston 4y ago
The usual relevant questions here are: 1) Are there externalized costs? 2) How much the value is actually created by owners vs other labor within the company? 3) Are all participants rewarded proportionally to the value they create, or is there a labor-value arbitrage going on? One simplifying/ideological model attributes the company's existence essentially to the owners and posits therefore obviously they deserve all the value and/or that every employee is participating purely voluntarily and so whatever they agree to must necessarily be fair. Another only recognizes the labor theory of value and would find anything other than a coop immoral.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
honkler 4y ago
OP said "super wealthy" not wealthy. There is a difference.
- serverholic 4y ago
  Thank you. I purposefully tried to make my comment as easy to agree with as possible but apparently there are a LOT of people in denial because it got downvoted to oblivion and flagged.
- fastball 4y ago
  I also said super wealthy.
csours 4y ago
> 2. Your company produces something hugely useful / beneficial for society; in other words, it produces something hugely valuable. 2. Your company extracts value from everywhere it can, to the detriment of it's counterparties: employees, the environment, customers, partners, contractors For one example: Amazon warehouse employees (contractors?) are not paid very well for very hard work. I'm sure someone has a comeback for this, but it is an example of value extraction. Another: Amazon does not do a great job of policing counterfeits, to the detriment of customers. Another: Sellers on Amazon have a variety of complaints, you can look them up. --- If the business existed for the purpose of being ethical, these conditions would not exist. The business exists for the purpose of extracting value. --- Edit: Put another way - If your company ONLY produces something highly valuable, then someone can simply create a competing product and undercut you. An example of this is looking at drug prices when patents expire. Generic drugs can be sold for MUCH cheaper than the patent protected "name brand" drug. The product is highly valuable, but may not be high cost, unless it is protected in some way. --- Edit edit: If you want to defend these companies or capitalism in general, that's fine with me. I would like to gently point out that sometimes we dance on very fine lines of morality in the course of doing business.
- Ralo 4y ago
  I used to work at a car part store and the majority of the staff was teenagers looking to get into the car world (either future mechanics, or car parts managers) but they WAY under paid us for the type of work. Repair shops looking for specialty parts that someone with mechanics experience should really be looking for, not some teenager asking "whats a brake rotor?". We had a revolving door of workers and our customers knew we were terrible and likely to get the wrong part. Getting screamed at by customers was daily because we had no idea what they were doing. However the exploitation was a trade off of, "I'll get a year experience and go to a dealership" or "I just need a filler job until I get a better job". It was ""exploitive"" but it was extremely helpful to me, it was the only job willing to let me be part time while in school that didn't involve hard physical labour. I did more exploitive jobs before, working 10+ hours hand shoveling snow in -40 for $10/hour. That company didn't last very long because they drained the whole city of potential employees and never knew who was gonna show the next day.
calderknight 4y ago
You are addressing a seperate claim to the one made. The actual claim is that there are no ethical super-wealthy people, not that such a thing is a logical impossibility.
- fastball 4y ago
  I guess my issue is that the claim was not demonstrated in any way whatsoever besides "because I say so", so I assumed that the poster must think that it is a logical impossibility – otherwise how could they be so certain?
  - calderknight 4y ago
    A thing can have a probability of zero, while being logically possible.
    - fastball 4y ago
      I'm not seeing any probabilistic models either.
quickthrower2 4y ago
You need a moat. Often that moat requires some questionable ethics to build.
serverholic 4y ago
You don't become super wealthy without doing something shady or being a greedy asshole. It's just not possible to beat out the competition and accumulate that much wealth without taking morally questionable shortcuts. Here's a short list of things that super rich people do: - screwing someone over - treating people like robots - lying/deception - taking advantage of people in poorer countries - taking advantage of tax loopholes - bending the law - buying off politicians - bullying people - etc.
- fastball 4y ago
  You saying that this is required is not proof that it is so.
anigbrowl 4y ago
The company has no externalities or strategic competitors and doesn't leverage market dominance? Is it situated at the North Pole and run by a jolly old man in a bright red suit?
howinteresting 4y ago
3 is actually two steps: 3a. Your company is therefore valuable. 3b. Your company being valuable makes you super wealthy. 3b is unethical.
- fastball 4y ago
  3b is not a new step, that's just a repetition of step 1. Are you saying you believe ownership of a company is unethical? It seems to be that statement needs to be justified with a little bit more than "because I say so".
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Well, there's plenty of ways to reduce one's wealth. Taxes, charitable donations (MacKenzie Scott), more ownership of the company by employees, and so on. But no, I don't think it is ethical for people to be billionaires.
    - fastball 4y ago
      What exactly are you objecting to when it comes to billionaires, though? The nominal wealth? The relative wealth? Whichever metric, where is the point where it goes into "immoral" territory and what is the justification for choosing that point over another?
      - howinteresting 4y ago
        I'm objecting to the idea, ethically, that a single person can own so much money. 1 billion is far beyond what anyone needs to have a comfortable life. Whatever the line is, 1 billion is clearly on the other side of it. I'm not interested in sorites paradox-ing the question beyond that.
        fastball 4y ago
        That's alright because most billionaires don't have that much money, they have wealth, which isn't really the same. Also there's probably lots of billionaires here in Indonesia, where 1B IDR is only $67k USD. Do you object to Indonesian billionaires as well? Or does it only matter if you're a billionaire in USD? What if I'm a billionaire in GBP? Do you really believe that everyone on earth should only be allowed to have exactly what is needed to "have a comfortable life" (which definition of comfortable we're following seems like another quandary that we'll ignore for the moment) and nothing more?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fallingknife 4y ago

Envy is a hell of a drug

sli 4y ago

This is very reductive and #2 is immediately a large leap.

fastball 4y ago
A large leap in what way? That companies have a hard time producing useful things, or that those useful things are valuable?

wwweston 4y ago

The usual relevant questions here are: 1) Are there externalized costs? 2) How much the value is actually created by owners vs other labor within the company? 3) Are all participants rewarded proportionally to the value they create, or is there a labor-value arbitrage going on? One simplifying/ideological model attributes the company's existence essentially to the owners and posits therefore obviously they deserve all the value and/or that every employee is participating purely voluntarily and so whatever they agree to must necessarily be fair. Another only recognizes the labor theory of value and would find anything other than a coop immoral.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

honkler 4y ago

OP said "super wealthy" not wealthy. There is a difference.

serverholic 4y ago
Thank you. I purposefully tried to make my comment as easy to agree with as possible but apparently there are a LOT of people in denial because it got downvoted to oblivion and flagged.
fastball 4y ago
I also said super wealthy.

csours 4y ago

> 2. Your company produces something hugely useful / beneficial for society; in other words, it produces something hugely valuable. 2. Your company extracts value from everywhere it can, to the detriment of it's counterparties: employees, the environment, customers, partners, contractors For one example: Amazon warehouse employees (contractors?) are not paid very well for very hard work. I'm sure someone has a comeback for this, but it is an example of value extraction. Another: Amazon does not do a great job of policing counterfeits, to the detriment of customers. Another: Sellers on Amazon have a variety of complaints, you can look them up. --- If the business existed for the purpose of being ethical, these conditions would not exist. The business exists for the purpose of extracting value. --- Edit: Put another way - If your company ONLY produces something highly valuable, then someone can simply create a competing product and undercut you. An example of this is looking at drug prices when patents expire. Generic drugs can be sold for MUCH cheaper than the patent protected "name brand" drug. The product is highly valuable, but may not be high cost, unless it is protected in some way. --- Edit edit: If you want to defend these companies or capitalism in general, that's fine with me. I would like to gently point out that sometimes we dance on very fine lines of morality in the course of doing business.

Ralo 4y ago
I used to work at a car part store and the majority of the staff was teenagers looking to get into the car world (either future mechanics, or car parts managers) but they WAY under paid us for the type of work. Repair shops looking for specialty parts that someone with mechanics experience should really be looking for, not some teenager asking "whats a brake rotor?". We had a revolving door of workers and our customers knew we were terrible and likely to get the wrong part. Getting screamed at by customers was daily because we had no idea what they were doing. However the exploitation was a trade off of, "I'll get a year experience and go to a dealership" or "I just need a filler job until I get a better job". It was ""exploitive"" but it was extremely helpful to me, it was the only job willing to let me be part time while in school that didn't involve hard physical labour. I did more exploitive jobs before, working 10+ hours hand shoveling snow in -40 for $10/hour. That company didn't last very long because they drained the whole city of potential employees and never knew who was gonna show the next day.

calderknight 4y ago

You are addressing a seperate claim to the one made. The actual claim is that there are no ethical super-wealthy people, not that such a thing is a logical impossibility.

fastball 4y ago
I guess my issue is that the claim was not demonstrated in any way whatsoever besides "because I say so", so I assumed that the poster must think that it is a logical impossibility – otherwise how could they be so certain?
- calderknight 4y ago
  A thing can have a probability of zero, while being logically possible.
  - fastball 4y ago
    I'm not seeing any probabilistic models either.

quickthrower2 4y ago

You need a moat. Often that moat requires some questionable ethics to build.

serverholic 4y ago

You don't become super wealthy without doing something shady or being a greedy asshole. It's just not possible to beat out the competition and accumulate that much wealth without taking morally questionable shortcuts. Here's a short list of things that super rich people do: - screwing someone over - treating people like robots - lying/deception - taking advantage of people in poorer countries - taking advantage of tax loopholes - bending the law - buying off politicians - bullying people - etc.

fastball 4y ago
You saying that this is required is not proof that it is so.

anigbrowl 4y ago

The company has no externalities or strategic competitors and doesn't leverage market dominance? Is it situated at the North Pole and run by a jolly old man in a bright red suit?

howinteresting 4y ago

3 is actually two steps: 3a. Your company is therefore valuable. 3b. Your company being valuable makes you super wealthy. 3b is unethical.

fastball 4y ago
3b is not a new step, that's just a repetition of step 1. Are you saying you believe ownership of a company is unethical? It seems to be that statement needs to be justified with a little bit more than "because I say so".
- howinteresting 4y ago
  Well, there's plenty of ways to reduce one's wealth. Taxes, charitable donations (MacKenzie Scott), more ownership of the company by employees, and so on. But no, I don't think it is ethical for people to be billionaires.
  - fastball 4y ago
    What exactly are you objecting to when it comes to billionaires, though? The nominal wealth? The relative wealth? Whichever metric, where is the point where it goes into "immoral" territory and what is the justification for choosing that point over another?
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      I'm objecting to the idea, ethically, that a single person can own so much money. 1 billion is far beyond what anyone needs to have a comfortable life. Whatever the line is, 1 billion is clearly on the other side of it. I'm not interested in sorites paradox-ing the question beyond that.
      - fastball 4y ago
        That's alright because most billionaires don't have that much money, they have wealth, which isn't really the same. Also there's probably lots of billionaires here in Indonesia, where 1B IDR is only $67k USD. Do you object to Indonesian billionaires as well? Or does it only matter if you're a billionaire in USD? What if I'm a billionaire in GBP? Do you really believe that everyone on earth should only be allowed to have exactly what is needed to "have a comfortable life" (which definition of comfortable we're following seems like another quandary that we'll ignore for the moment) and nothing more?