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This is hilariously a-historic, and companies are still getting off with an absolute slap-on-the-wrist both from actual regulators, and from these maverick empl

This is hilariously a-historic, and companies are still getting off with an absolute slap-on-the-wrist both from actual regulators, and from these maverick employees who trash them on social media. If they still don't like that maybe we need to go all the way back to what got us the weekends we love and 40 hour work weeks: blowing up rail bridges and throwing bricks of C4 in police cars. It blows my mind how thin-skinned businesses are now. Everybody talks about America's golden age from the end of WWII to the Reagan era when America dominated world markets (because we were the only unscathed nation from that conflict, and we had half of money worldwide) but nobody goes back further and I can't help but think that's because American businesses are quite content, contrary to public statements, with trashing campaigns on social media, specifically because consumer revolt doesn't and never has worked. If you want to know what did work, again: coal miners blew up rail bridges, locomotives, destroyed company assets by the ton, and killed thousands of Pinkerton strike breakers and their partners in law enforcement. Consumer boycott didn't get us weekends. Explosives did.

no_wizard 2y ago
I agree with the sentiment, though violence is, to me, the solution of last resort. We should at least try actually organizing labor first. On the note of thin skinned corporations: it’s an outgrowth of the thin skin that corporate leadership has. Executives don’t like accountability or feedback that differs from their worldview. I’ve seen it so much, especially with these workplace surveys where the same issues come up and they never ever implement the proper solution to fix the issues.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > I agree with the sentiment, though violence is, to me, the solution of last resort. Oh for sure. I've already lived through enough historically significant times for my taste, though I suspect the ongoing issues are going to create more of them anyway no matter what I personally want to experience. People are suffering and social media is making it impossible to ignore, and increasingly the younger generations barely have lives worth considering as a loss if they end up the victims of state violence, which increases radicalization and you get more people ready to pick up guns. > We should at least try actually organizing labor first. It is good to see so much support for unions in the US again. They got a bad rap for a long time but people are coming back around in a big way now that we've had so many years of corporations basically being the shot callers in our supposedly representative Democracy nation. > On the note of thin skinned corporations: it’s an outgrowth of the thin skin that corporate leadership has. Executives don’t like accountability or feedback that differs from their worldview. I’ve seen it so much, especially with these workplace surveys where the same issues come up and they never ever implement the proper solution to fix the issues. Absolutely, and that's been a thing as long as mediocre wealthy people were lording their success over the peasant farmers they owned under feudalism. The noble of whatever land could have any of his subjects murdered at will but that power, while cool, doesn't change the fact that the same lord would probably be dead within a month if he had to live the lives of his subjects. He was always a useless bastard if you took away his money, and every great leap forward for common folks in human history occurred when enough people realized that and decided to take away his money, and possibly his head in the process. Our modern feudal lords are no different. Mark Zuckerberg is a mediocre college dropout programmer who built a website to rate the looks of his female classmates, and the sole reason he's still (mis)managing Meta is that he's institutionally unable to be fired for his incredibly poor performance at that job. Elon Musk has never done anything in his life that wasn't solely at the behest of the fortunes he was given (loaned, what the fuck ever) from his father. His only marketable skill is writing checks and the abysmal failure of the Cybertruck is a monument to his hubris. Tons of CEOs all over tech now aren't the people who actually built any of it, nor understand it, but are pure business graduates who's only ideas involve playing with fake numbers on spreadsheets to continue fooling Wall Street into thinking they can just grow forever, despite on how-on-it's-face ridiculous that is as a concept.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    Reading the last bit of your comment made me suddenly realize how crazy it is that this site is run by a company that doesn’t build anything. This place acts like the center of the hacker universe. It has the name and everything. And it’s run by a finance company.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      I mean it’s named for a finance company but I don’t know to what degree said company really participates in is administration? We get posts about funding rounds here and there but I’m utterly disinterested in venture capital or what it finances and I still find this sites content interesting and valuable.
      - wat10000 2y ago
        They don’t seem to intervene, I agree. But still, this is the sort of thing that should be running on a server in somebody’s basement, or at least some random data center they had an “in” with.
        ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        I mean, honestly that's why I'm here? It has that vibe. It has the vibe of a mid-2000's forum dedicated to a specific set of topics that's well moderated. The fact that it runs in the datacenter for a a venture capital firm is... I dunno. I don't feel any bother over it. I talk shit about VC constantly here and I haven't been banned for it.
mistrial9 2y ago
no, no, no.. violence spreads like wildfire.. rewrite this and subtract that part ASAP
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  As I said in my other comment, I don't want that. My ideal world would be businesses waking up to the notion that endlessly strip-mining consumers is going to result in them [ censored for HN ] on the evening news, and just giving people better salaries and letting some of the money flow down the hierarchy. You know, a sustainable economy. But they don't want that, so... And you know what else spreads like wildfire? Wildfires, that are going to keep getting worse year over year because our economy is destroying the planet.
wat10000 2y ago
History forgotten is history repeated, and people seem unable to remember history much beyond a human lifespan. Businesses have forgotten that the alternative to unionization and peaceful strikes isn’t obedient, underpaid workers. As JFK said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. I don’t endorse violence, but I recognize that it’s what happens if you close off all alternatives. I hope the people who make these choices realize this before it’s too late.

no_wizard 2y ago

I agree with the sentiment, though violence is, to me, the solution of last resort. We should at least try actually organizing labor first. On the note of thin skinned corporations: it’s an outgrowth of the thin skin that corporate leadership has. Executives don’t like accountability or feedback that differs from their worldview. I’ve seen it so much, especially with these workplace surveys where the same issues come up and they never ever implement the proper solution to fix the issues.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> I agree with the sentiment, though violence is, to me, the solution of last resort. Oh for sure. I've already lived through enough historically significant times for my taste, though I suspect the ongoing issues are going to create more of them anyway no matter what I personally want to experience. People are suffering and social media is making it impossible to ignore, and increasingly the younger generations barely have lives worth considering as a loss if they end up the victims of state violence, which increases radicalization and you get more people ready to pick up guns. > We should at least try actually organizing labor first. It is good to see so much support for unions in the US again. They got a bad rap for a long time but people are coming back around in a big way now that we've had so many years of corporations basically being the shot callers in our supposedly representative Democracy nation. > On the note of thin skinned corporations: it’s an outgrowth of the thin skin that corporate leadership has. Executives don’t like accountability or feedback that differs from their worldview. I’ve seen it so much, especially with these workplace surveys where the same issues come up and they never ever implement the proper solution to fix the issues. Absolutely, and that's been a thing as long as mediocre wealthy people were lording their success over the peasant farmers they owned under feudalism. The noble of whatever land could have any of his subjects murdered at will but that power, while cool, doesn't change the fact that the same lord would probably be dead within a month if he had to live the lives of his subjects. He was always a useless bastard if you took away his money, and every great leap forward for common folks in human history occurred when enough people realized that and decided to take away his money, and possibly his head in the process. Our modern feudal lords are no different. Mark Zuckerberg is a mediocre college dropout programmer who built a website to rate the looks of his female classmates, and the sole reason he's still (mis)managing Meta is that he's institutionally unable to be fired for his incredibly poor performance at that job. Elon Musk has never done anything in his life that wasn't solely at the behest of the fortunes he was given (loaned, what the fuck ever) from his father. His only marketable skill is writing checks and the abysmal failure of the Cybertruck is a monument to his hubris. Tons of CEOs all over tech now aren't the people who actually built any of it, nor understand it, but are pure business graduates who's only ideas involve playing with fake numbers on spreadsheets to continue fooling Wall Street into thinking they can just grow forever, despite on how-on-it's-face ridiculous that is as a concept.
- wat10000 2y ago
  Reading the last bit of your comment made me suddenly realize how crazy it is that this site is run by a company that doesn’t build anything. This place acts like the center of the hacker universe. It has the name and everything. And it’s run by a finance company.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I mean it’s named for a finance company but I don’t know to what degree said company really participates in is administration? We get posts about funding rounds here and there but I’m utterly disinterested in venture capital or what it finances and I still find this sites content interesting and valuable.
    - wat10000 2y ago
      They don’t seem to intervene, I agree. But still, this is the sort of thing that should be running on a server in somebody’s basement, or at least some random data center they had an “in” with.
      - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        I mean, honestly that's why I'm here? It has that vibe. It has the vibe of a mid-2000's forum dedicated to a specific set of topics that's well moderated. The fact that it runs in the datacenter for a a venture capital firm is... I dunno. I don't feel any bother over it. I talk shit about VC constantly here and I haven't been banned for it.

mistrial9 2y ago

no, no, no.. violence spreads like wildfire.. rewrite this and subtract that part ASAP

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
As I said in my other comment, I don't want that. My ideal world would be businesses waking up to the notion that endlessly strip-mining consumers is going to result in them [ censored for HN ] on the evening news, and just giving people better salaries and letting some of the money flow down the hierarchy. You know, a sustainable economy. But they don't want that, so... And you know what else spreads like wildfire? Wildfires, that are going to keep getting worse year over year because our economy is destroying the planet.

wat10000 2y ago

History forgotten is history repeated, and people seem unable to remember history much beyond a human lifespan. Businesses have forgotten that the alternative to unionization and peaceful strikes isn’t obedient, underpaid workers. As JFK said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. I don’t endorse violence, but I recognize that it’s what happens if you close off all alternatives. I hope the people who make these choices realize this before it’s too late.