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> At least private business pays for with blood for it's mistakes. > The beauty of capitalism is that it allows society to thrive even when all actors are irre

by cced 4y ago

> At least private business pays for with blood for it's mistakes. > The beauty of capitalism is that it allows society to thrive even when all actors are irresponsible. Which we, humans, are. I think the laid off tech workers and people of Ohio might have a few things to say about that..

scarface74 4y ago
You mean the tech workers who make anywhere from 4-8x the median wage in America and even 2x-3x the median wage in their local market? I’ll play the smallest fiddle for those who didn’t save during the good times. Yes, I work for $BigTech and I save a significant portion of my income.
- cced 4y ago
  Violin or not, OP's post was regarding corporate efficiency. Reading any headline over the last few weeks will show you that corporations over-hired and are laying off workers. I guess blood is blood, regardless of who's it is. Curious how you glossed over the folks in Ohio.
  - hbrn 4y ago
    Sure, occasionally private businesses will screw up and hurt their employees. Nobody is denying that. But what's the alternative? Some kind of magical government that doesn't screw up? Government rarely has incentives to be efficient. It's mistakes are always covered by taxpayer money, effectively punishing those who are efficient. Why are we always comparing real thing that has downsides with magical thing that's perfect? I don't disagree, magical thing is indeed perfect. The only issue is that it doesn't exist.
    - cced 4y ago
      > It's mistakes are always covered by taxpayer money, effectively punishing those who are efficient. The government also covers bailouts for banks using taxpayer money, effectively punishing everyone. > Why are we always comparing real thing that has downsides with magical thing that's perfect? I don't disagree, magical thing is indeed perfect. The only issue is that it doesn't exist. Again, the original claims were 1) that corporations pay for their mistakes with blood and 2) that the beauty of capitalism allows for a thriving society with an entirely irresponsible set of actors. All that's being said here is that 1) private business do not in fact pay for their mistakes in blood and 2) capitalism doesn't allow a society to thrive when all actors are irresponsible, in fact, you only need to have a select few actors to be irresponsible in order to degrade the state of society.
      - hbrn 4y ago
        > The government also covers bailouts for banks using taxpayer money, effectively punishing everyone. What's the alternative? Other than more scrutiny and harsher punishments for banks, which very few people are against. > private business do not in fact pay for their mistakes in blood Just because 0.1% of businesses gets bailouts, you're going to ignore 99.9%? Are you the type of person that says vaccines don't work because people still get sick? > capitalism doesn't allow a society to thrive when all actors are irresponsible, in fact, you only need to have a select few actors to be irresponsible in order to degrade the state of society. The "degraded state of society" is still orders of magnitude better than the alternatives I heard of. I'd say it still fits whatever the definition of thriving you can come up with. Nothing is perfect, it's quite easy to criticize anything. But if you're criticizing without offering any alternatives, your criticism isn't worth much. So I'll ask again, what is alternative that you're offering?
        cced 4y ago
        > What's the alternative? Other than more scrutiny and harsher punishments for banks, which very few people are against. Few people are against it, yet we didn't hear about too many bankers getting sent to the locker, did we? > Just because 0.1% of businesses gets bailouts, you're going to ignore 99.9%? Are you the type of person that says vaccines don't work because people still get sick? Not sure where you're getting the 0.1% figure but "privatizing gains and socializing losses" is hardly a new idea. > Nothing is perfect, it's quite easy to criticize anything. But if you're criticizing without offering any alternatives, your criticism isn't worth much. I think we're some ways apart from being close to perfect, no one is asking for perfection just that things not be awesome for 1% of the population at the expense of the rest. > So I'll ask again, what is alternative that you're offering? I won't give you a primer on different economic models, at the risk of bringing too much taboo magic into the discussion, just know that not all models depend on the exploitation of workers, labour pressure via unemployment, and minimum wages that require government subsidized food stamps in order to allow workers to live while working multiple part time jobs with no benefits. edit: In the spirit of hn guidelines and for the curious, I think some of the discussions with B. Sanders may be appealing to some.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    That is corporate efficiency. Manufacturing efficiencies increased by just in time processes. Hiring and firing people who are only seen as “resources” when needed is efficient from a business point of view. Before anyone accuses me of being a heartless business owner or executive, I’ve never in my 27 year professional career been in a position to fire anyone.
    - cced 4y ago
      > Hiring and firing people who are only seen as "resources" when needed is efficient from a business point of view. 1) To entertain this point, maybe? If your optics of the situation was efficiency for the company, but why would you not look at efficiency as a whole and for whom? As a society, don't you think we should be structuring things such that they are efficient? Is the company that doesn't end up paying for large ecological disasters "efficient" because it offloaded the cost of the cleanup onto the people/government? Sure? But I think society as a whole would benefit from adding resources to maintain infrastructure to prevent these types of ecological problems. > Hiring and firing people who are only seen as "resources" when needed is efficient from a business point of view. 2) If the companies involved in the current layoffs are, by your definition, "efficient", what would you make of Apple [1] in this situation? Super really efficient? What's their secret sauce? Are the in/efficient because they didn't overly take advantage of the hiring craze? What are the costs associated with engineering layoffs and how are those costs manifested in society? Line items like headcount on a spreadsheet are easy to quantify, organizational knowledge loss, loss of trust/moral, impacts of layoffs on mental/communal health, are harder to quantify. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34466054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34466054
      - scarface74 4y ago
        > If the companies involved in the current layoffs are, by your definition, "efficient", what would you make of Apple [1] in this situation? Super really efficient? I’m going to first answer that question by speaking about the $BigTech company I know best because I work their and my RSUs are worth half their all time highs - Amazon - and the industry I know best - cloud - because I work at AWS. Amazon Retail thought that the Covid induced online shopping was going to be the new normal and over hired. AWS didn’t really get hit with layoffs (https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-employees-among-latest-round-of-amazon-layoffs-impacting-18000-staff/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-employees-amo...). Azure also didn’t suffer layoffs (https://www.channelfutures.com/business-models/microsoft-lays-off-150-azure-employees-as-part-of-ongoing-workforce-reduction https://www.channelfutures.com/business-models/microsoft-lay...). Google has so many useless money losing products and the attention span of a crack addled flea. No one ever accused Google of being well managed. I can’t speak about GCP. Apple outsources most of the people who build its products. While Apple hasn’t laid off people, the contractors who create its phones who work for Apple for all intents and purposes have laid off people. Facebook now is down to its employment level of a couple of years ago. My moral would be fine if I was working for Facebook [1] for a couple of years at FB salaries. I would have saved more than I already do. And many 2nd tier tech companies aren’t profitable. The easy money ran out. [1] I don’t hate myself enough to work for Facebook.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
>laid off tech workers In government or union heavy industry they’d still be forced to pay them. Let’s keep that in mind as we see Twitter still running completely fine months later after firing so many. Not everyone has inherent value, many are being paid but not actually creating value the other side of the transaction and it’s silly to pretend that’s fine.

by cced 4y ago

scarface74 4y ago

You mean the tech workers who make anywhere from 4-8x the median wage in America and even 2x-3x the median wage in their local market? I’ll play the smallest fiddle for those who didn’t save during the good times. Yes, I work for $BigTech and I save a significant portion of my income.

cced 4y ago
Violin or not, OP's post was regarding corporate efficiency. Reading any headline over the last few weeks will show you that corporations over-hired and are laying off workers. I guess blood is blood, regardless of who's it is. Curious how you glossed over the folks in Ohio.
- hbrn 4y ago
  Sure, occasionally private businesses will screw up and hurt their employees. Nobody is denying that. But what's the alternative? Some kind of magical government that doesn't screw up? Government rarely has incentives to be efficient. It's mistakes are always covered by taxpayer money, effectively punishing those who are efficient. Why are we always comparing real thing that has downsides with magical thing that's perfect? I don't disagree, magical thing is indeed perfect. The only issue is that it doesn't exist.
  - cced 4y ago
    > It's mistakes are always covered by taxpayer money, effectively punishing those who are efficient. The government also covers bailouts for banks using taxpayer money, effectively punishing everyone. > Why are we always comparing real thing that has downsides with magical thing that's perfect? I don't disagree, magical thing is indeed perfect. The only issue is that it doesn't exist. Again, the original claims were 1) that corporations pay for their mistakes with blood and 2) that the beauty of capitalism allows for a thriving society with an entirely irresponsible set of actors. All that's being said here is that 1) private business do not in fact pay for their mistakes in blood and 2) capitalism doesn't allow a society to thrive when all actors are irresponsible, in fact, you only need to have a select few actors to be irresponsible in order to degrade the state of society.
    - hbrn 4y ago
      > The government also covers bailouts for banks using taxpayer money, effectively punishing everyone. What's the alternative? Other than more scrutiny and harsher punishments for banks, which very few people are against. > private business do not in fact pay for their mistakes in blood Just because 0.1% of businesses gets bailouts, you're going to ignore 99.9%? Are you the type of person that says vaccines don't work because people still get sick? > capitalism doesn't allow a society to thrive when all actors are irresponsible, in fact, you only need to have a select few actors to be irresponsible in order to degrade the state of society. The "degraded state of society" is still orders of magnitude better than the alternatives I heard of. I'd say it still fits whatever the definition of thriving you can come up with. Nothing is perfect, it's quite easy to criticize anything. But if you're criticizing without offering any alternatives, your criticism isn't worth much. So I'll ask again, what is alternative that you're offering?
      - cced 4y ago
        > What's the alternative? Other than more scrutiny and harsher punishments for banks, which very few people are against. Few people are against it, yet we didn't hear about too many bankers getting sent to the locker, did we? > Just because 0.1% of businesses gets bailouts, you're going to ignore 99.9%? Are you the type of person that says vaccines don't work because people still get sick? Not sure where you're getting the 0.1% figure but "privatizing gains and socializing losses" is hardly a new idea. > Nothing is perfect, it's quite easy to criticize anything. But if you're criticizing without offering any alternatives, your criticism isn't worth much. I think we're some ways apart from being close to perfect, no one is asking for perfection just that things not be awesome for 1% of the population at the expense of the rest. > So I'll ask again, what is alternative that you're offering? I won't give you a primer on different economic models, at the risk of bringing too much taboo magic into the discussion, just know that not all models depend on the exploitation of workers, labour pressure via unemployment, and minimum wages that require government subsidized food stamps in order to allow workers to live while working multiple part time jobs with no benefits. edit: In the spirit of hn guidelines and for the curious, I think some of the discussions with B. Sanders may be appealing to some.
- scarface74 4y ago
  That is corporate efficiency. Manufacturing efficiencies increased by just in time processes. Hiring and firing people who are only seen as “resources” when needed is efficient from a business point of view. Before anyone accuses me of being a heartless business owner or executive, I’ve never in my 27 year professional career been in a position to fire anyone.
  - cced 4y ago
    > Hiring and firing people who are only seen as "resources" when needed is efficient from a business point of view. 1) To entertain this point, maybe? If your optics of the situation was efficiency for the company, but why would you not look at efficiency as a whole and for whom? As a society, don't you think we should be structuring things such that they are efficient? Is the company that doesn't end up paying for large ecological disasters "efficient" because it offloaded the cost of the cleanup onto the people/government? Sure? But I think society as a whole would benefit from adding resources to maintain infrastructure to prevent these types of ecological problems. > Hiring and firing people who are only seen as "resources" when needed is efficient from a business point of view. 2) If the companies involved in the current layoffs are, by your definition, "efficient", what would you make of Apple [1] in this situation? Super really efficient? What's their secret sauce? Are the in/efficient because they didn't overly take advantage of the hiring craze? What are the costs associated with engineering layoffs and how are those costs manifested in society? Line items like headcount on a spreadsheet are easy to quantify, organizational knowledge loss, loss of trust/moral, impacts of layoffs on mental/communal health, are harder to quantify. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34466054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34466054
    - scarface74 4y ago
      > If the companies involved in the current layoffs are, by your definition, "efficient", what would you make of Apple [1] in this situation? Super really efficient? I’m going to first answer that question by speaking about the $BigTech company I know best because I work their and my RSUs are worth half their all time highs - Amazon - and the industry I know best - cloud - because I work at AWS. Amazon Retail thought that the Covid induced online shopping was going to be the new normal and over hired. AWS didn’t really get hit with layoffs (https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-employees-among-latest-round-of-amazon-layoffs-impacting-18000-staff/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-employees-amo...). Azure also didn’t suffer layoffs (https://www.channelfutures.com/business-models/microsoft-lays-off-150-azure-employees-as-part-of-ongoing-workforce-reduction https://www.channelfutures.com/business-models/microsoft-lay...). Google has so many useless money losing products and the attention span of a crack addled flea. No one ever accused Google of being well managed. I can’t speak about GCP. Apple outsources most of the people who build its products. While Apple hasn’t laid off people, the contractors who create its phones who work for Apple for all intents and purposes have laid off people. Facebook now is down to its employment level of a couple of years ago. My moral would be fine if I was working for Facebook [1] for a couple of years at FB salaries. I would have saved more than I already do. And many 2nd tier tech companies aren’t profitable. The easy money ran out. [1] I don’t hate myself enough to work for Facebook.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

>laid off tech workers In government or union heavy industry they’d still be forced to pay them. Let’s keep that in mind as we see Twitter still running completely fine months later after firing so many. Not everyone has inherent value, many are being paid but not actually creating value the other side of the transaction and it’s silly to pretend that’s fine.