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There's nothing wrong with doing business. But current business culture is not in a (morally) good state, and your average businessperson is not very interested

There's nothing wrong with doing business. But current business culture is not in a (morally) good state, and your average businessperson is not very interested in making the world better if it plays against their personal ambitions. And being answerable to investors (who almost by nature are focused on shortish term returns to the near-exclusion of all else) only exacerbates that. Just as people should specialize, institutions should too. We should not have this whole movement to jawbone companies into being “nice.” All we are going to get is a creepy facsimile. See, e.g. greenwashing. Instead we should understand that profit maximizing firms operating in competition with each other is an incredibly powerful but one dimensional tool. We in our sovereign capacity should set the incentives and rules such that those tools are used to accomplish the things we collectively desire to see in the world. Incentives and rules (with enforcement) are reliable and durable. A “better businessperson” is just transient luck.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
the issue is as soon as you enable the power for some to set incentives and rules to see certain outcomes, it gets taken over by the rich entrenched status quo that is easily able to use the tools of modern propaganda to drown out any true grassroots opinion, and see to it that their horse is the one to win the race. It almost takes a total reset event like a gigantic war to shake up the economic status quo but even then, what forms in the dust is almost naturally these oligarchs like stardust accumulating into black holes after the big bang.
rachofsunshine 2y ago
I agree with that, but I don't think it's too controversial to say that those checks are not working very well right now. Changing the nature of regulatory capture isn't in my power. Starting a company and trying not to be crappy is.
- bradleyjg 2y ago
  Hard to argue with that!
anigbrowl 2y ago
Incentives and rules (with enforcement) are reliable and durable. I wish this were true. But a largish slice of the US polity (headed by one of the two credible candidates for President) is dead against these things and attacks any sort of institutional infrastructure or notion of accountability whenever it's politically expedient to do so. In a less obvious way, that movement is also dedicated to the dismantlement of the administrative state - ostensibly in the name of returning legislative power and accountability to the Congress, pragmatically because it adheres to a vision of commercial activity with far less legal restraint.
- bradleyjg 2y ago
  But a largish slice of the US polity (headed by one of the two credible candidates for President) is dead against … The point is you have to convince these people. That’s the whole and only ballgame. Trying to pressure companies into wearing skinsuits via external or internal pressure might be satisfying but it’s a waste of effort. Convince one company not to work with UAE and another one will gladly take its place. Elect a President that takes human rights into account in foreign policy and now you might get somewhere. But to do that you have to actually go talk to people that disagree with you. Not just post preaching to the choir posts about how terrible those other guys are.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    People (including me) have been trying that for years; but dialog only works if both parties approach it in good faith. When you have a political movement that leans heavily on orthodoxy and loyalty, and whose response to repeatedly losing elections is to simply insist they're rigged and the results are invalid (absent any credible evidence) discussions based on mutually agreeable priors and conventional logic are not fruitful. The prevailing orthodoxy in this group is that losing elections or court cases is a priori evidence of fraud, violent action to overturn negative outcomes is often permissible, and that this right is reserved for future negative outcomes. They're not willing to be convinced, and loudly advertise their belief that it's OK to impose their point of view on others by force. I mean, if you're dealing with someone who avers that you should be fed into a woodchipper, it's not wise to put one arm in pursuit of a compromise.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

the issue is as soon as you enable the power for some to set incentives and rules to see certain outcomes, it gets taken over by the rich entrenched status quo that is easily able to use the tools of modern propaganda to drown out any true grassroots opinion, and see to it that their horse is the one to win the race. It almost takes a total reset event like a gigantic war to shake up the economic status quo but even then, what forms in the dust is almost naturally these oligarchs like stardust accumulating into black holes after the big bang.

rachofsunshine 2y ago

I agree with that, but I don't think it's too controversial to say that those checks are not working very well right now. Changing the nature of regulatory capture isn't in my power. Starting a company and trying not to be crappy is.

bradleyjg 2y ago
Hard to argue with that!

anigbrowl 2y ago

Incentives and rules (with enforcement) are reliable and durable. I wish this were true. But a largish slice of the US polity (headed by one of the two credible candidates for President) is dead against these things and attacks any sort of institutional infrastructure or notion of accountability whenever it's politically expedient to do so. In a less obvious way, that movement is also dedicated to the dismantlement of the administrative state - ostensibly in the name of returning legislative power and accountability to the Congress, pragmatically because it adheres to a vision of commercial activity with far less legal restraint.

bradleyjg 2y ago
But a largish slice of the US polity (headed by one of the two credible candidates for President) is dead against … The point is you have to convince these people. That’s the whole and only ballgame. Trying to pressure companies into wearing skinsuits via external or internal pressure might be satisfying but it’s a waste of effort. Convince one company not to work with UAE and another one will gladly take its place. Elect a President that takes human rights into account in foreign policy and now you might get somewhere. But to do that you have to actually go talk to people that disagree with you. Not just post preaching to the choir posts about how terrible those other guys are.
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  People (including me) have been trying that for years; but dialog only works if both parties approach it in good faith. When you have a political movement that leans heavily on orthodoxy and loyalty, and whose response to repeatedly losing elections is to simply insist they're rigged and the results are invalid (absent any credible evidence) discussions based on mutually agreeable priors and conventional logic are not fruitful. The prevailing orthodoxy in this group is that losing elections or court cases is a priori evidence of fraud, violent action to overturn negative outcomes is often permissible, and that this right is reserved for future negative outcomes. They're not willing to be convinced, and loudly advertise their belief that it's OK to impose their point of view on others by force. I mean, if you're dealing with someone who avers that you should be fed into a woodchipper, it's not wise to put one arm in pursuit of a compromise.