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And there's a systemic solution, called unemployment insurance, that every company is required to pay into, and they pay more when they lay people off. What els

by imgabe 3y ago

And there's a systemic solution, called unemployment insurance, that every company is required to pay into, and they pay more when they lay people off. What else would you have us do? These are grown professional adults we're talking about, not helpless wards of the state. It's not unreasonable to expect people to be able to take care of themselves.

Apocryphon 3y ago
Decouple health insurance from employment, for starters.
- imgabe 3y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree, but we're getting into the weeds here. My point is just that choosing to voluntarily end a business arrangement, within the the terms of the agreement, does not constitute "victimizing" someone. Otherwise, the employer could claim they're a victim when an employee quits. A store could claim they're a victim if a customer starts shopping at a different store, and so on. It's ridiculous. The tendency to cry victimhood at every obstacle is pernicious and debilitating to those who practice it. I would encourage people to avoid it.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    The way I see it, mass layoffs are one of those situations where it feels unjust. A company might have acted incompetently, even recklessly, leading to people’s lives get disrupted. Are the executives culpable or were they victims of economic fortunes? Who knows? Either way, their positions often don’t change afterwards, and the companies stock price will usually rise as expenses fall with their workforce. So you have one set of people suffering, and others connected to the suffering being unaffected. Whether that connection is causation is up to interpretation. Either way the ethical calculus certainly feels imbalanced. You can use all the logic you want, but it’s hard to address the feeling of something amiss. It might not be arson, but it still feels like a controlled burn that went out of control.
    - imgabe 3y ago
      Sure things can feel all sorts of ways, but an initial gut reaction is not often the best one. People can choose to see themselves as a victim or they can choose to see themselves as having agency. Deciding that feelings are immutable things that can't be touched by reason is a choice too. A layoff can prompt suffering or it can just be a blip between jobs depending on how you prepared someone is for it. A person who chooses to exercise agency is more likely to take steps to prepare because they don't feel they're helplessly at mercy of forces they can't control. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
      - Apocryphon 3y ago
        Feeling like a victim, doing something about one’s predicament, making preparations to prevent it from happening again, harboring a grievance, refusing to accept the status quo - one can do all of this and more. People are complex and multi-task.

by imgabe 3y ago

Apocryphon 3y ago

Decouple health insurance from employment, for starters.

imgabe 3y ago
I don't necessarily disagree, but we're getting into the weeds here. My point is just that choosing to voluntarily end a business arrangement, within the the terms of the agreement, does not constitute "victimizing" someone. Otherwise, the employer could claim they're a victim when an employee quits. A store could claim they're a victim if a customer starts shopping at a different store, and so on. It's ridiculous. The tendency to cry victimhood at every obstacle is pernicious and debilitating to those who practice it. I would encourage people to avoid it.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  The way I see it, mass layoffs are one of those situations where it feels unjust. A company might have acted incompetently, even recklessly, leading to people’s lives get disrupted. Are the executives culpable or were they victims of economic fortunes? Who knows? Either way, their positions often don’t change afterwards, and the companies stock price will usually rise as expenses fall with their workforce. So you have one set of people suffering, and others connected to the suffering being unaffected. Whether that connection is causation is up to interpretation. Either way the ethical calculus certainly feels imbalanced. You can use all the logic you want, but it’s hard to address the feeling of something amiss. It might not be arson, but it still feels like a controlled burn that went out of control.
  - imgabe 3y ago
    Sure things can feel all sorts of ways, but an initial gut reaction is not often the best one. People can choose to see themselves as a victim or they can choose to see themselves as having agency. Deciding that feelings are immutable things that can't be touched by reason is a choice too. A layoff can prompt suffering or it can just be a blip between jobs depending on how you prepared someone is for it. A person who chooses to exercise agency is more likely to take steps to prepare because they don't feel they're helplessly at mercy of forces they can't control. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      Feeling like a victim, doing something about one’s predicament, making preparations to prevent it from happening again, harboring a grievance, refusing to accept the status quo - one can do all of this and more. People are complex and multi-task.