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> It's their primary function, and their primary good: producing useful stuff or services for their customers This claim is a specific ideological interpretat

> It's their primary function, and their primary good: producing useful stuff or services for their customers This claim is a specific ideological interpretation of business, call it "consumer capitalism". You can reject than and believe say, "social capitalism" or "democratic capitalism". Where the purpose of business is to, on net, improve society -- and is given a licence to operate only insofar as, on net, it does so. > their sole job is to set and maintain good standards in their area Again, call this "noble bureaucracy". You could instead believe, "resolution bureaucracy" where the job of bureaucracy is to prevent conflict, not to resolve to an ideal.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> You can reject than and believe say, "social capitalism" or "democratic capitalism". Where the purpose of business is to, on net, improve society -- and is given a licence to operate only insofar as, on net, it does so. You could do, but then you have to invent a currency to award to people who you think improve society from your perspective. Or you could just use the existing one.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  That's the ideology of money = reward. Businesses routinely do not produce net benefits; routinely do not have efficient prices; routinely benefit their customers at the expense of society; and routinely distribute money away from net goods towards net bads. Indeed it is routine that an efficient market operating at marginal profits is a catastrophe for society: consider social media, climate change, and so on. This isnt a problem I need to solve for the observation to be true. The issue I have here is the black/white false perceptions of politics/business.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > That's the ideology of money = reward. I don't think this is automatically an ideology. Money is a universal intermediary for exchange of goods and services - "reward" is a bit of a juvenile word for it, but it is obviously an exchange of value. > Indeed it is routine that an efficient market operating at marginal profits is a catastrophe for society: consider social media, climate change, and so on. But this is just seeing the bad side, and also assuming that markets somehow are worse than alternatives. Almost everything produced, e.g. the thousands of specialist components that go into your laptop or phone, and them not costing a giant amount of money or advancement, is based on efficient markets. And big government solutions such as communist Russia is much more of a catastrophe, as people tend to be slaughtered or starve to death. Markets, while not perfect, are clearly better than them, even in the worst cases. If you want a morality police to decide who gets to decide how moral each business is, you have to decide how corruptable that incredibly powerful entity would be, compared to the decentralised market action of customers voluntarily paying for products and services.
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      Now apply that reasoning to politics.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Sure: because there's a load of power in politics, it should be minimised where possible, as the state has the ability to take your money and also to lock you up, so the people we pay for with our taxes need to be beyond reproach. There is no natural check and balance that the free market has where if I don't like a product or service, I don't pay for it any more. They have access to money they take forever, so they need to be held to a higher standard. Thus in general, the market should handle money and not power (as it does, mostly[0]), and the government should handle power. [0] an example of this probably being a bad idea is private prisons

robertlagrant 3y ago

> You can reject than and believe say, "social capitalism" or "democratic capitalism". Where the purpose of business is to, on net, improve society -- and is given a licence to operate only insofar as, on net, it does so. You could do, but then you have to invent a currency to award to people who you think improve society from your perspective. Or you could just use the existing one.

mjburgess 3y ago
That's the ideology of money = reward. Businesses routinely do not produce net benefits; routinely do not have efficient prices; routinely benefit their customers at the expense of society; and routinely distribute money away from net goods towards net bads. Indeed it is routine that an efficient market operating at marginal profits is a catastrophe for society: consider social media, climate change, and so on. This isnt a problem I need to solve for the observation to be true. The issue I have here is the black/white false perceptions of politics/business.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > That's the ideology of money = reward. I don't think this is automatically an ideology. Money is a universal intermediary for exchange of goods and services - "reward" is a bit of a juvenile word for it, but it is obviously an exchange of value. > Indeed it is routine that an efficient market operating at marginal profits is a catastrophe for society: consider social media, climate change, and so on. But this is just seeing the bad side, and also assuming that markets somehow are worse than alternatives. Almost everything produced, e.g. the thousands of specialist components that go into your laptop or phone, and them not costing a giant amount of money or advancement, is based on efficient markets. And big government solutions such as communist Russia is much more of a catastrophe, as people tend to be slaughtered or starve to death. Markets, while not perfect, are clearly better than them, even in the worst cases. If you want a morality police to decide who gets to decide how moral each business is, you have to decide how corruptable that incredibly powerful entity would be, compared to the decentralised market action of customers voluntarily paying for products and services.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    Now apply that reasoning to politics.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Sure: because there's a load of power in politics, it should be minimised where possible, as the state has the ability to take your money and also to lock you up, so the people we pay for with our taxes need to be beyond reproach. There is no natural check and balance that the free market has where if I don't like a product or service, I don't pay for it any more. They have access to money they take forever, so they need to be held to a higher standard. Thus in general, the market should handle money and not power (as it does, mostly[0]), and the government should handle power. [0] an example of this probably being a bad idea is private prisons