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I find this tone annoying. Let's discuss systems and incentives, not personalities. The decision makers aren't all nasty people, they're maximizing their profit

I find this tone annoying. Let's discuss systems and incentives, not personalities. The decision makers aren't all nasty people, they're maximizing their profits, just as most people would do in their shoes. (Or if they're all mean people, why do the mean rise to the top?) > Illustrating this grotesque point further, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft saw their collective valuations rise by $800bn after announcing steep job cuts So the market felt very strongly that the layoffs were a good business decision. Is that because Wall Street is mean, too? Or isn't that somewhat objective evidence that the layoffs were good for the companies? A very interesting article could have been written in its place.

blamestross 4y ago
> The decision makers aren't all nasty people, they're maximizing their profits At least where I'm standing, fundimental profit incentive is morally bad. Yes they are by definition "nasty people". Our fundimental responsibility is to improve ourselves and the world around us. It can occasionally align with profit incentive (we have a culture where money can be a powerful tool), but considering it "normal" or "ok" seems problematic. If you want to talk about incentives, how about what we can do to change them?
- MockObject 4y ago
  When I review human history, in all its approaches to organizing technologically advanced societies ever since the plow, I see profit-seeking behavior everywhere, even in societies deliberately engineered to thwart the profit motive, so evidently, altruism never scales much further than an extended family. I see profit-seeking behavior when I watch a squirrel hoard nuts, or a dog snap at a scrap of meat on the ground. I see the entire biosphere as a profit-seeking process, and I don't want to set my morality against the very biosphere that created everything I value, and my very ability to value.
  - blamestross 4y ago
    That is a level of rationalization of capitalism that I had not previously imagined. Competition doesn't have to be unbound. All things in nature find satiation. We can be satisfiers not optimizers.
    - MockObject 4y ago
      This goes far beyond capitalism, and describes all forms of human complex societal organization, from the ancient slave states described by Marx, to the Leninist states in our modern times. Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production.
      - blamestross 4y ago
        > Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production. This is both right and wrong. What makes an organism? You are a multicellular system of cooperating cells. If this statement was true, you couldn't exist. The truth is that the most powerful adaptation to increase your organisms ability to compete is to in fact build a bigger organism. Your body is a product of that strong evolutionary trend. Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. We call portion of organisms that revert to this competitive mentality "cancer" and eventually it does win. That doesn't make it morally right, just the last parts of a body to die after it kills the rest in shortsightedness.
        MockObject 4y ago
        > Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. Cooperation is definitely a popular strategy for survival, and our instinct for altruism benefits the survival of human families and small groups. Consider though, that in each of your examples, the collective entities formed then grow to the greatest extent, limited only by resource constraints and competition from other entities.

blamestross 4y ago

> The decision makers aren't all nasty people, they're maximizing their profits At least where I'm standing, fundimental profit incentive is morally bad. Yes they are by definition "nasty people". Our fundimental responsibility is to improve ourselves and the world around us. It can occasionally align with profit incentive (we have a culture where money can be a powerful tool), but considering it "normal" or "ok" seems problematic. If you want to talk about incentives, how about what we can do to change them?

MockObject 4y ago
When I review human history, in all its approaches to organizing technologically advanced societies ever since the plow, I see profit-seeking behavior everywhere, even in societies deliberately engineered to thwart the profit motive, so evidently, altruism never scales much further than an extended family. I see profit-seeking behavior when I watch a squirrel hoard nuts, or a dog snap at a scrap of meat on the ground. I see the entire biosphere as a profit-seeking process, and I don't want to set my morality against the very biosphere that created everything I value, and my very ability to value.
- blamestross 4y ago
  That is a level of rationalization of capitalism that I had not previously imagined. Competition doesn't have to be unbound. All things in nature find satiation. We can be satisfiers not optimizers.
  - MockObject 4y ago
    This goes far beyond capitalism, and describes all forms of human complex societal organization, from the ancient slave states described by Marx, to the Leninist states in our modern times. Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production.
    - blamestross 4y ago
      > Nature's balance is found as each organism struggles with all its might and ability to expand, but not by any organism voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production. This is both right and wrong. What makes an organism? You are a multicellular system of cooperating cells. If this statement was true, you couldn't exist. The truth is that the most powerful adaptation to increase your organisms ability to compete is to in fact build a bigger organism. Your body is a product of that strong evolutionary trend. Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. We call portion of organisms that revert to this competitive mentality "cancer" and eventually it does win. That doesn't make it morally right, just the last parts of a body to die after it kills the rest in shortsightedness.
      - MockObject 4y ago
        > Bacterial mats, multicellular organisms, forests, fields of grass, mamals, families, civilizations. All of these things are escalations in survivability due to every part of them choosing to "voluntarily refraining from maximizing its production." in favor of behavior that improves the status quo for others. Cooperation is definitely a popular strategy for survival, and our instinct for altruism benefits the survival of human families and small groups. Consider though, that in each of your examples, the collective entities formed then grow to the greatest extent, limited only by resource constraints and competition from other entities.