25 ms·

If you rephrase this as fighting consolidation through open source software, I think it is rather clear that you cannot. Consolidation will always have benefit

by taeric 3y ago

If you rephrase this as fighting consolidation through open source software, I think it is rather clear that you cannot. Consolidation will always have benefits at the small. That there is a straw that breaks that camel's back is not an argument against carrying more straw. I am personally of the mind that we need to somehow shift the care not from personal future but to collective future. I don't have any thoughts on how to actually do that, though. It is very hard to convince people that are legitimately working hard for their personal well being that they should also give thoughts to those that come next.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> It is very hard to convince people that are legitimately working hard for their personal well being that they should also give thoughts to those that come next. What have you tried?
- taeric 3y ago
  Fair question, I think? But I am not exactly in a position to really try anything. What do you have in mind?
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Sorry - I wasn't clear. I mean what have you tried that leads you to know this: > It is very hard to convince people that are legitimately working hard for their personal well being that they should also give thoughts to those that come next
    - taeric 3y ago
      I'm mainly reflecting on friends and family that are heavily anti tax. Probably most easily seen by places that have a hard time justifying the funding of a school district.
      - Joker_vD 3y ago
        I knew a guy who was not exactly anti-tax, but he believed that poor people should be taxed more heavily than the rich ones, the moral justification being that that would motivate the poor to try harder to be rich; plus, of course, there are more poor people, and taxing them would likely yield more money than taxing the rich, not to mention that much of the taxes go to the social programs to support the poor, so it's only fair if they paid for those themselves.
- hinkley 3y ago
  I can’t speak for OP but the fact that business ethics classes tend to be viewed not as cautionary tales but as how-tos indicates to me that the whole system is rotten at the core.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    So much worse is just how unserious they are taken. People consider them jokes instead of somber reflections on harms done by assholes and negligence.
    - xkekjrktllss 3y ago
      Capitalism is the rules, not business ethics classes.
      - hinkley 3y ago
        One of the kids I know is in a business ethics class right now and thinks it's bullshit ("describe a time when you were a decent human being") so I see things haven't really changed in 25 years, and the old jokes still work.
        xkekjrktllss 3y ago
        It is a fact that the rules prioritize profit over being a decent human being. Why not change that?
    - hinkley 3y ago
      I’m told that those 80’s and 90’s Greed is Good/Wallstreet movies were spawned by a book called Liar’s Poker. Like the guy who accidentally invented Waterfall, it was meant as a cautionary tale and people thought it sounded good, let’s try it. Haven’t read it but I keep meaning to.
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
> It is very hard to convince people that are legitimately working hard for their personal well being that they should also give thoughts to those that come next. I think the way to do this is to put their gains in jeopardy. We need to sit down and find an example where some money-making endeavor made life worse for most people, and scrub those dollars from the record. Perhaps we'll do this yearly. Make dollars gained doing obvious good more reliable than dollars gained doing obvious harm.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  The issue is who decides the obvious good and obvious harm? As soon as you’ve made such a powerful authority it becomes a target for regulatory capture since the incentives if you pull this off are sky high.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    No need for an authority, it can be a DIY/opt-in sort of thing. If somebody came up to you and presented you with some money that had metadata re: how it was earned, you'd have to decide whether to accept it, so it would be up to you to decide if that endeavor was one you wanted to align yourself with. If you make that call in a way that disagrees with your wider community, you may end up in a situation where you can't find anyone else who will accept that money, so I expect some degree of consensus will emerge. Making that judgement call on every transaction would be tedious, so I imagine organizations would form which are trusted to make that call, and then you'd sort of "subscribe" your wallet to their decisions so that you don't have to think about it all the time. As for regulatory capture, if such an organization stopped aligning with your interests, you could just unsubscribe from their judgements and either do it yourself or form a competing one.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      See, I think this is a great reason to colonize Mars or the Moon. Because I'd like to see the result of this social experiment without watching the world crash and burn at the whim of popularity economics.
hinkley 3y ago
We need a PBS for websites and a PBS for software. But some of the rules that made PBS PBS have been rolled back so I don’t know that this will happen any time soon. In its place we have various foundations but those aren’t enough.

by taeric 3y ago

robertlagrant 3y ago

> It is very hard to convince people that are legitimately working hard for their personal well being that they should also give thoughts to those that come next. What have you tried?

taeric 3y ago
Fair question, I think? But I am not exactly in a position to really try anything. What do you have in mind?
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Sorry - I wasn't clear. I mean what have you tried that leads you to know this: > It is very hard to convince people that are legitimately working hard for their personal well being that they should also give thoughts to those that come next
  - taeric 3y ago
    I'm mainly reflecting on friends and family that are heavily anti tax. Probably most easily seen by places that have a hard time justifying the funding of a school district.
    - Joker_vD 3y ago
      I knew a guy who was not exactly anti-tax, but he believed that poor people should be taxed more heavily than the rich ones, the moral justification being that that would motivate the poor to try harder to be rich; plus, of course, there are more poor people, and taxing them would likely yield more money than taxing the rich, not to mention that much of the taxes go to the social programs to support the poor, so it's only fair if they paid for those themselves.
hinkley 3y ago
I can’t speak for OP but the fact that business ethics classes tend to be viewed not as cautionary tales but as how-tos indicates to me that the whole system is rotten at the core.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  So much worse is just how unserious they are taken. People consider them jokes instead of somber reflections on harms done by assholes and negligence.
  - xkekjrktllss 3y ago
    Capitalism is the rules, not business ethics classes.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      One of the kids I know is in a business ethics class right now and thinks it's bullshit ("describe a time when you were a decent human being") so I see things haven't really changed in 25 years, and the old jokes still work.
      - xkekjrktllss 3y ago
        It is a fact that the rules prioritize profit over being a decent human being. Why not change that?
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I’m told that those 80’s and 90’s Greed is Good/Wallstreet movies were spawned by a book called Liar’s Poker. Like the guy who accidentally invented Waterfall, it was meant as a cautionary tale and people thought it sounded good, let’s try it. Haven’t read it but I keep meaning to.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

> It is very hard to convince people that are legitimately working hard for their personal well being that they should also give thoughts to those that come next. I think the way to do this is to put their gains in jeopardy. We need to sit down and find an example where some money-making endeavor made life worse for most people, and scrub those dollars from the record. Perhaps we'll do this yearly. Make dollars gained doing obvious good more reliable than dollars gained doing obvious harm.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
The issue is who decides the obvious good and obvious harm? As soon as you’ve made such a powerful authority it becomes a target for regulatory capture since the incentives if you pull this off are sky high.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  No need for an authority, it can be a DIY/opt-in sort of thing. If somebody came up to you and presented you with some money that had metadata re: how it was earned, you'd have to decide whether to accept it, so it would be up to you to decide if that endeavor was one you wanted to align yourself with. If you make that call in a way that disagrees with your wider community, you may end up in a situation where you can't find anyone else who will accept that money, so I expect some degree of consensus will emerge. Making that judgement call on every transaction would be tedious, so I imagine organizations would form which are trusted to make that call, and then you'd sort of "subscribe" your wallet to their decisions so that you don't have to think about it all the time. As for regulatory capture, if such an organization stopped aligning with your interests, you could just unsubscribe from their judgements and either do it yourself or form a competing one.
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    See, I think this is a great reason to colonize Mars or the Moon. Because I'd like to see the result of this social experiment without watching the world crash and burn at the whim of popularity economics.

hinkley 3y ago

We need a PBS for websites and a PBS for software. But some of the rules that made PBS PBS have been rolled back so I don’t know that this will happen any time soon. In its place we have various foundations but those aren’t enough.